William B. Magruder

William Beans Magruder (1810–1869) was a medical doctor and the seventeenth Mayor of Washington City, District of Columbia, from 1856 to 1858.

Magruder was born in Montgomery County, Maryland in 1810. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Georgetown, D.C., where Magruder was raised and educated. He studied medicine and pharmacy in Washington, and then at the University of Maryland Medical School at Baltimore, graduating in 1831 and setting up practice in Washington. A year later, a disastrous epidemic of cholera broke out in Washington, and the citizens petitioned for Magruder to be placed in charge of the Western Hospital. His heroic conduct during the epidemic made his reputation as an important physician in the city. He shortly afterward traveled to Cincinnati to assist that city with its own cholera epidemic.

Magruder was the subject of a famous anecdote that wound its way into Harper's magazine. He was attempting to talk a small boy into taking a dose of castor oil, promising him that the medicine was very sweet, when the boy replied, "Well, then, if it's so good, why don't you take some yourself?"

Magruder did not receive the Anti-Know-Nothing nomination for mayor in the 1858 election, and the coalition's new candidate, James G. Berret, acceded to the office. Magruder ran again as an independent candidate in 1860 but lost to Berret. After leaving office, Magruder continued to practice medicine until dying from a stomach infection in May, 1869. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

In 1887, the William Beans Magruder School was opened on the 1700 block of M Street NW. It was closed after the 1979–1980 school year, rehabilitated and reopened as the Magruder building, part of the Seward Square office complex.