Thomas Greenhill

Thomas Greenhill Line engraving 1705Thomas Greenhill (1669?–1740) was a surgeon who worked in London and was also author of a book Νεκροκηδεία (Greek, literally Dead-funeral) or The Art of Embalming on embalming. He was also surgeon to Henry Howard, 7th Duke of Norfolk. He was born after the death of his father, William Greenhill, the last of 39 children born to Elizabeth Greenhill.

Life According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Most of the basic details of his life are a matter for conjecture. Essential parish papers have been mutilated ... Papers concerning his family shed no direct light on his education, practice, family, or death." The Dictionary of National Biography observes that "he was born ..after his father's death, probably at Abbot's Langley, Hertfordshire, as his father died there". He then lived in King Street Bloomsbury in London. His father was William Greenhill, Secretary to General Monck, and his mother was Elizabeth Greenhill (1615–1679) of Harrow in Middlesex and Abbots Langley.

According to a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1805 there exists preserved on the back of a small portrait identified as that of Mrs Greenhill, mother of Thomas Greenhill, the following words. Similar words according to Notes and Queries in 1852 are also inscribed in a copy of Thomas Greenhill's The Art of Embalming. She had 39 children by one husband. They were all born alive, and baptised and all single births save one. The last child, who was born after his father's death, was a surgeon in King-street, Bloomsbury, and wrote the above book, which he was desirous to bring into fashion. She was heard to say by a credible witness, with whom I [the person whose signature attests it] was well acquainted, that she believed, if her husband had lived, she might have had two or three more children. [signed] Rich. Ashby, a clergyman.

Reflecting this unusual circumstance of birth, he was granted a version of his father's coat of arms in 1698 that commemorated "his being the thirty-ninth child of one father and mother."" It consists of "Vert 2 bars of ermine, in chief a lion passant guardant or" and a demi-griffin for its crest differenced by 39 mullets. Its motto was "Honos Alit Artes" or "Honour Nourishes the Arts".