Edward Rigby

Edward Rigby (27 December 1747 – 27 October 1821) was an English physician, writer, and local politician.

Life The son of John Rigby, by his wife Sarah (d. 1773), daughter of John Taylor, he was born at Chowbent, Lancashire, on 27 December 1747. One of his sisters married Dr. Caleb Hillier Parry, and became the mother of Sir William Edward Parry. Educated at Norwich School and Warrington Academy, Rigby was apprenticed in 1762 to David Martineau (1726–1768), surgeon, of Norwich. He then studied in London. Admitted a member of the Corporation of Surgeons on 4 May 1769, he married in the same year, and settled in Norwich.

In 1786 Rigby took the lead in establishing the Norfolk Benevolent Society for the relief of the widows and orphans of medical men. A practical agriculturist, he was the friend of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester of Holkham. Rigby experimented on his own farm at Framingham Earl, about five miles from Norwich. Rigby is said to have made known the flying shuttle to Norwich manufacturers, and to have introduced vaccination.

Rigby died on 27 October 1821, and was buried at Framingham. and German, and made Rigby's professional reputation. He wrote also: daughter of William Palgrave of Great Yarmouth, by whom he had twelve children, four of whom, three girls and a boy, were the production of one birth on 15 August 1817. Edward Rigby (1804–1860) and Elizabeth Eastlake were among them.