Richard Partridge

Richard Partridge FRS, FRCS (19 January 1805, in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire – 25 March 1873, in London) was a British surgeon. Although he became President of both the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, he is best known for his part in apprehending the London Burkers gang and for failing to spot a bullet lodged in Giuseppe Garibaldi's leg.

He was the tenth child and youngest son of twelve children of Samuel Partridge, a Glaswegian merchant who moved to Ross-on-Wye in his retirement. His eldest brother was the portrait painter, John Partridge.

Education and career

He was present during the autopsy on the boy's body, and gave evidence at the murder trial of the four gang members, stating that the boy's injuries seemed consistent with a blow to the back of the neck. Witnesses had identified the victim as an Italian beggar, Carlo Ferriere, who exhibited white mice in a cage. Three of the gang were found guilty of the murder; before they were hanged, John Bishop and Thomas Williams confessed to drowning the boy in a well after drugging him with laudanum, stating, however, that the victim was actually from Lincolnshire. Partridge's involvement placed him in the public eye at a young age, and the case seems to have made a strong impression on him; he is said to have often included the tale in his lectures. Before the invention of X-rays, detection of the bullet was highly problematic, and the surgeons treating Garibaldi disagreed over whether the ball had lodged in his ankle. When, after two weeks, the condition of the ankle had worsened, some began to favour amputation, and fears for the popular Italian patriot grew in England. A public subscription raised over a thousand guineas to send a British surgeon to Italy to provide a second opinion on the bullet wound. The Lancet was also scathing about the 'new manifestation of the proverbial insular pride which is ever insisting upon the immense superiority of everything British'.

Unfortunately, this optimistic prediction was not fulfilled; by the end of October, the development of sepsis made amputation appear inevitable. The French surgeon Auguste Nélaton, known for innovations in surgical tools, was asked to examine Garibaldi. An electrical probe designed by Favre had been used previously, without success, in an attempt to determine if the bullet remained. Nélaton used a normal surgical probe to examine the wound, concluding that Partridge had been mistaken and the bullet was indeed lodged in the joint; he recommended extraction using ball forceps.

Personal life He married Frances Janette Turner; they had several children, among whom was the illustrator and actor Sir John Bernard Partridge. He died in London in 1873. His career never recovered from his error in overlooking the bullet in Garibaldi's wound.