With contributions from Cirencester Archaeological & Historical Society, members & friends
John Clinch, the Cirencester man who took vaccination to the New World
The recent unveiling of a plaque commemorating Edward Jenner’s time at Cirencester Grammar School highlighted his connection to our town. What is less well known is that Cirencester can also claim a connection to his friend John Clinch who was instrumental in spreading Jenner’s vaccination methods throughout Canada.
John Clinch was born in Cirencester and was baptised at the Parish Church, along with his twin sister Sarah, on 09 January 1749. Nothing is known of his father’s occupation but the family was wealthy enough for John to be educated by Rev. Dr. Washbourn at the Grammar School on Park Street, and it was there that he became great friends with Edward Jenner.
Both boys studied at the Grammar School until 1764, when at the age of 14 they were apprenticed to Daniel Ludlow, a surgeon in Chipping Sodbury. With their apprenticeships complete, in 1770 they moved to London to continue their studies under the renowned surgeon and anatomist Dr John Hunter.
Jenner subsequently returned to Berkeley to set up his practice while Clinch went to Poole in Dorset. It was there that he came into contact with merchants with business interests in Newfoundland. The fisheries there had attracted Poole fishermen, and Clinch was persuaded that medics were needed in these new territories. After a sea journey of several weeks and 2,000 miles, Clinch arrived at Bonavista, where he became a lay preacher alongside his work as a doctor. He later moved to Trinity, and on 17 June 1784 married Hannah Hart of English Harbour. The couple went on to have seven sons and one daughter, the eldest son being named Edward Jenner Clinch in honour of his old friend.
Clinch had continued to preach in Trinity and in 1787 the residents petitioned the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to appoint him as their rector. To be appointed he had to be ordained, so he returned to Poole to undertake theological studies. Whilst there he set up the first Sunday School in the town, based on the model promoted by Gloucester’s Richard Raikes. The aim was to provide some rudimentary education for poor children – who were generally working throughout the week – covering the basics of reading and writing as well as scripture study.
Once ordained, Clinch returned to Trinity where he was now responsible for the spiritual as well as the physical health of the community, alongside which he found time to take on the roles of magistrate and surveyor. He also studied the language of the indigenous (and now extinct) Beothuk native Canadian tribe, ultimately producing his ‘Clinch Vocabulary’, a glossary of Beothuk words and phrases.
Despite the distance between them, Clinch and Jenner had remained in contact and Jenner had kept Clinch informed about his vaccination experiments. In 1798 Edward Jenner’s nephew, George Charles Jenner, arrived in Newfoundland with a vial of ‘cowpox matter’ that Jenner had asked him to deliver to Clinch, enabling Clinch to carry out vaccinations using Jenner’s methods.
In 1802 Clinch reported to Jenner, ‘I began by inoculating my own children and went on with this salutary work till I had inoculated 700 persons of all ages and descriptions’. St. John’s, a settlement along the coast from Trinity, suffered an outbreak of smallpox shortly after Clinch had begun his vaccinations, and he notes, ‘St John’s . . . offered convincing proofs of the safety of the practice to the inhabitants and servants in Trinity Bay; they saw (at first, with astonishment) that those who . . . were inoculated with the smallpox [were] exposed to the infection without the least inconvenience.’ Clinch’s success encouraged other doctors to adopt the practice, which began to spread through Canada.
As a leading local figure, Clinch was a founding member and first Master of the masonic Union Lodge of Trinity formed in 1795 by merchants’ agents, master mariners and other members of the Amity Lodge of Poole, retaining a link back to England.
John Clinch died on 22 November 1819 aged 72, and is buried at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Trinity with his wife and one of his sons. There is evidence that another son, also called John, may have returned to Cirencester as an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary, renewing the family ties with our town.
Alison Wagstaff
With thanks to Trinity Historical Society, Newfoundland and to Martin Graebe and Nora Philips for help with illustrations.
https://www.trinityhistoricalsociety.com/index.html
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