Humphry Sandwith

Humphry Sandwith IV (1822 – 16 May 1881) was an English army physician, known also as a writer and activist.

Early life Born at Bridlington, Yorkshire, he was eldest son of Humphry Sandwith III (1792–1874), a surgeon who became a physician in Kingston upon Hull; his mother was a daughter of Isaac Ward of Bridlington. After some schooling, where he learnt little, Sandwith was apprenticed at age 16 to his uncle Thomas Sandwith (1789–1867), another medical man, at Beverley.

Sandwith left Beverley in 1843, for the medical school at Hull, and spent a few months at Lille to learn French. He then entered University College, London, and in the autumn of 1846 he passed the examinations of London University and the Royal College of Surgeons, and was qualified to practise. He was appointed house surgeon to the Hull Infirmary in 1847, but poor health made him resign. Beatson and Sandwith went by steamer to Varna to join forces with Omar. Sandwith served with this corps on the Danube in July and August 1854. It was not in combat, but there was much sickness, and Sandwith had to eke out his medical stores by gathering herbs and leeches. Finding that the corps was to be soon disbanded, he offered his services to William Fenwick Williams, who was going to Armenia as British Commissioner with the Turkish army. They were accepted, and on 10 September he left Constantinople for Erzerum. He did send Owen an aye-aye, pickled in alcohol, that he had brought from Madagascar. He came home on leave in September 1859, and in the following spring he resigned, in hope that he would shortly get another post.

Pleading the Serbian cause, Sandwith returned to England at the beginning of 1877. He lectured and spoke on behalf of the Serbian refugees. He took back £7,000 for them in March; but fell ill, and returned home.

In October 1877 Sandwith went to Bucharest for three months, as agent for the England-Russian Sick and Wounded Society, a Red Cross organisation of the Russo-Ottoman War. With him were Leslie Maturin and four other British surgeons. He set up a hospice at Putineiu. During the period he argued against British support for Turkey against Russia. A reformer and member of the Jamaica committee, in 1868 he tried unsuccessfully to enter parliament for Marylebone. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, he went to France on behalf of the National Aid Society. But he was dissatisfied with the actions of the committee, and did not work with them long. He regarded the Land Reform pamphlet as the only clear legacy of his involvement with the Cobdenites. He became secretary of the LTRA, but the group was dormant.

Works Sandwith's major writings were: The Land and Landlordism (1873)

Family Sandwith married, on 29 May 1860, Lucy Hargreaves, whom he had met through Catherine Sinclair. She was the daughter of Robert Hargreaves of Accrington, whose brother William was close to Richard Cobden. They had five children, one of whom, together with Lucy, died in 1882. The only son of the marriage, Lincoln Sandwith of the 8th Hussars, was a historian of the Sandwith family. One of the daughters, Catherine Sinclair married Richard Von Dechend, son of Hermann von Dechend. Another daughter Gladys, married Fleming Mant Sandwith, the tropical medicine authority.