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GREY, ALEXANDER, a surgeon
in the service of the honourable East India Company, and founder of an
hospital for the sick poor of the town and county of Elgin, was the son of
deacon Alexander Grey, a respectable and ingenious tradesman of Elgin, who
exercised the united crafts of a wheel-wright and watchmaker, and of Janet
Sutherland, of whose brother, Dr Sutherland, the following anecdote is
related by some of the oldest inhabitants of Elgin. It is said that the
king of Prussia, Frederick William I. being desirous to have his family
inoculated with small pox, applied in England for a surgeon to repair to
Berlin for that purpose. Though this was an honourable, and probably
lucrative mission, yet from the severe and arbitrary character of the
king, it was regarded by many as a perilous undertaking to the individual,
as it was not impossible that he might lose some of his patients.
Sutherland, at all hazards, offered his service, was successful in the
treatment of his royal patients, and was handsomely rewarded. On his
return to England, his expedition probably brought him more into public
notice, for we afterwards find him an M.D. residing and practising as a
physician at Bath, until he lost his sight, when he came to Elgin, and
lived with the Greys for some years previous to 1775, when he died.
Deacon Grey had a family of
three sons and two daughters, and by his own industry and some pecuniary
assistance from Dr Sutherland, he was enabled to give them a better
education than most others in their station. Alexander, the subject of
this memoir, born in 1751, was the youngest of the family. Induced by the
advice or success of his uncle, he made choice of the medical profession,
and was apprenticed for the usual term of three years to Dr Thomas
Stephen, a physician of great respectability in Elgin. He afterwards
attended the medical classes in the college of Edinburgh, and having
completed his education he obtained the appointment of an assistant
surgeoncy on the Bengal establishment. It does not appear that he was
distinguished either by his professional skill or literary acquirements
from the greater proportion of his professional brethren in the east. When
advanced in life, he married a lady much younger than himself, and this
ill-assorted match caused him much vexation, and embittered his few
remaining years. They had no children, and as there was no congeniality in
their dispositions nor agreement in their habits, they separated some time
before Dr Grey’s death, which happened in 1808. By economical habits he
amassed a considerable fortune, and it is the manner in which he disposed
of it that gives him a claim to be ranked among distinguished Scotsmen.
It is no improbable
supposition that, in visiting the indigent patients of the humane
physician under whom he commenced his professional studies, his youthful
mind was impressed with the neglected and uncomfortable condition of the
sick poor of his native town, and that when he found himself a man of
wealth without family, the recollection of their situation recurred, and
he formed the benevolent resolution of devoting the bulk of his fortune to
the endowment of an hospital for their relief. He bequeathed for this
purpose, in the first instance, twenty thousand pounds, besides about
seven thousand available at the deaths of certain annuitants, and four
thousand pounds more, liable to another contingency. From various causes,
over which the trustees appointed by the deed of settlement had no
control, considerable delay was occasioned in realizing the funds, and the
hospital was not opened for the reception of patients until the beginning
of 1819. It is an elegant building of two stories, in the Grecian style,
after a design by James Gillespie, Esq. architect, and is erected on a
rising ground to the west of Elgin. The funds are under the management of
the member of parliament for the county, the sheriff depute, and the two
clergymen of the established church, ex officio, with three
life directors named by the founder in the deed of settlement. A physician
and surgeon appointed by the trustees at fixed salaries, attend daily in
the hospital. For several years there was a prejudice against the
institution among the class for whom it was founded, but this gradually
wore off, and the public are now fully alive to, and freely avail
themselves of the advantages it affords.
Mr Grey did not limit his
beneficence to the founding and endowing of the hospital which will
transmit his name to future generations; he bequeathed the annual interest
of two thousand pounds to "the reputed old maids in the town of
Elgin, daughters of respectable but decayed families." This charity
is placed under the management of the two clergymen and the physicians of
the town of Elgin, and it is suggested that, to be useful, it ought not to
extend beyond eight or ten individuals. At the death of Mrs Grey, a
farther sum of one thousand pounds was to fall into this fund. The annual
interest of seven thousand pounds was settled on the widow during her
life, and it was directed that at her death four thousand pounds of the
principal should be appropriated to the building of a new church in the
town of Elgin, under the inspection of the two clergymen of the town, and
that the interest of this sum should be applied to the use of the hospital
until a church should be required. This is the contingency already
referred to; and as a durable and handsome new church, of dimensions
sufficient to accommodate the population of the town and parish, was
erected by the heritors, at an expense exceeding eight thousand pounds,
not many years ago, the funds of the hospital, in all probability, will
for a long time have the advantage of the interest of this bequest. Grey
was kind, and even liberal to his relatives during his life, and to his
sister, the only member of his family who survived him, he left a handsome
annuity, with legacies to all her family unprovided for at her death. On
the whole he seems to have been a warm-hearted and benevolent man; but
being disappointed in the happiness which he expected from his matrimonial
connexion, his temper was soured, and a considerable degree of peevishness
and distrust is evident throughout the whole of his deed of settlement.
Whatever were his failings, his memory will be cherished by the thousands
of poor for whom he has provided medical succour in the hour of distress;
while the public at large cannot fail to remember with respect, a man who
displayed so much benevolence and judgment in the disposal of the gifts of
fortune. |
