In the entire history of charlatanism, however, it would be difficult to point to a career more extraordinary than the brilliant though brief one of St. John Long, in our own cultivated London, at a time scarcely more than a generation distant from the present. Though a pretender, and consummate quack, he was distinguished from the vulgar herd of cheats by the possession of enviable personal endowments, a good address, and a considerable quantity of intellect. The son of an Irish basket-maker, he was born in or near Doneraile, and in his boyhood assisted in his father's humble business. His artistic talents, which he cultivated for some time without the aid of a drawing-master, enabled him, while still quite a lad, to discontinue working as a rush-weaver. For a little while he stayed at Dublin, and had some intercourse with Daniel Richardson the painter; after which he moved to Limerick county, and started on his own account as a portrait-painter, and an instructor in the use of the brush. That his education was not superior to what might be expected in a clever youth of such lowly extraction, the following advertisement, copied from a Limerick paper of February 10, 1821, attests:—

"Mr John Saint John Long, Historical and Portrait Painter, the only pupil of Daniel Richardson, Esq., late of Dublin, proposes, during his stay in Limerick, to take portraits from Ittalian Head to whole length; and parson desirous of getting theirs done, in historical, hunting, shooting, fishing, or any other character; or their family, grouped in one or two paintings from life-size to miniature, so as to make an historical subject, choseing one from history."

"The costume of the period from whence it would be taken will be particularly attended to, and the character of each proserved."

"He would take views in the country, terms per agreement. Specimens to be seen at his Residence, No. 116, Georges Street, opposite the Club-house, and at Mr James Dodds, Paper-staining Warehouse, Georges Street.

"Mr Long is advised by his several friends to give instructions in the Art of Painting in Oils, Opeak, Chalk, and Water-colours, &c., to a limited number of Pupils of Respectability two days in each week at stated hours."

"Gentlemen are not to attend at the same hour the Ladies attend at. He will supply them in water-colours, &c."

How the young artist acquired the name of St. John is a mystery. When he blazed into notoriety, his admirers asserted that it came to him in company with noble blood that ran in his veins; but more unkind observers declared that it was assumed, as being likely to tickle the ears of his credulous adherents. His success as a provincial art-professor was considerable. The gentry of Limerick liked his manly bearing and lively conversation, and invited him to their houses to take likenesses of their wives, flirt with their daughters, and accompany their sons on hunting and shooting excursions. Emboldened by good luck in his own country, and possibly finding the patronage of the impoverished aristocracy of an Irish province did not yield him a sufficient income, he determined to try his fortune in England. Acting on this resolve, he hastened to London, and with ingratiating manners and that persuasive tongue which nine Irishmen out of ten possess, he managed to get introductions to a few respectable drawing-rooms. He even obtained some employment from Sir Thomas Lawrence, as colour-grinder and useful assistant in the studio; and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and also of the Royal Asiatic Society. But like many an Irish adventurer, before and after him, he found it hard work to live on his impudence, pleasant manners, and slender professional acquirements. He was glad to colour anatomical drawings for the professors and pupils of one of the minor surgical schools of London; and in doing so picked up a few pounds and a very slight knowledge of the structure of the human frame. The information so obtained stimulated him to further researches, and, ere a few more months of starvation had passed over, he deemed himself qualified to cure all the bodily ailments to which the children of Adam are subject.He invented a lotion or liniment endowed with the remarkable faculty of distinguishing between sound and unsound tissues. To a healthy part it was as innocuous as water; but when applied to a surface under which any seeds of disease were lurking, it became a violent irritant, creating a sore over the seat of mischief, and stimulating nature to throw off the morbid virus. He also instructed his patients to inhale the vapour which rose from a certain mixture compounded by him in large quantities, and placed in the interior of a large mahogany case, which very much resembled an upright piano. In the sides of this piece of furniture were apertures, into which pipe-stalks were screwed for the benefit of afflicted mortals, who, sitting on easy lounges, smoked away like a party of Turkish elders.

With these two agents St. John Long engaged to combat every form of disease—gout, palsy, obstructions of the liver, cutaneous affections; but the malady which he professed to have the most complete command over was consumption. His success in surrounding himself with patients was equal to his audacity. He took a large house in Harley Street, and fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to consult him; and for some seasons every morning and afternoon (from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) the public way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his door. The old and the young alike flocked to him; but nine of his patients out of every ten were ladies. For awhile the foolish of every rank in London seemed to have but one form in which to display their folly. Needy matrons from obscure suburban villages came with their guineas to consult the new oracle; and ladies of the highest rank, fashion, and wealth, hastened to place themselves and their daughters at the mercy of a pretender's ignorance.

Unparalleled were the scenes which the reception-rooms of that notorious house in Harley Street witnessed. In one room were two enormous inhalers, with flexible tubes running outwards in all directions, and surrounded by dozens of excited women—ladies of advanced years, and young girls giddy with the excitement of their first London season—puffing from their lips the medicated vapour, or waiting till a mouth-piece should be at liberty for their pink lips. In another room the great magician received his patients. Some he ordered to persevere in inhalation, others he divested of their raiment, and rubbed his miraculous liniment into their backs, between their shoulders or over their bosoms. Strange to say, these lavations and frictions—which invariably took place in the presence of third persons, nurses or invalids—had very different results. The fluid, which, as far as the eye could discern, was taken out of the same vessel, and was the same for all, would instantaneously produce on one lady a burning excoriation, which had in due course to be dressed with cabbage-leaves; but on another would be so powerless that she could wash in it, or drink it copiously, like ordinary pump-water, with impunity. "Yes," said the wizard, "that was his system, and such were its effects. If a girl had tubercles in her lungs, the lotion applied to the outward surface of her chest would produce a sore, and extract the virus from the organs of respiration. If a gentleman had a gouty foot, and washed it in this new water of Jordan, at the cost of a little temporary irritation the vicious particles would leave the affected part. But on any sound person who bathed in it the fluid would have no power whatever."

The news of the wonderful remedy flew to every part of the kingdom; and from every quarter sick persons, wearied of a vain search after an alleviation of their sufferings, flocked to London with hope renewed once more. St. John Long had so many applicants for attention that he was literally unable to give heed to all of them; and he availed himself of this excess of business to select for treatment those cases only where there seemed every chance of a satisfactory result. In this he was perfectly candid, for time after time he declared that he would take no one under his care who seemed to have already gone beyond hope. On one occasion he was called into the country to see a gentleman who was in the last stage of consumption; and after a brief examination of the poor fellow's condition, he said frankly—

"Sir, you are so ill that I cannot take you under my charge at present. You want stamina. Take hearty meals of beefsteaks and strong beer; and if you are better in ten days, I'll do my best for you and cure you."

It was a safe offer to make, for the sick man lived little more than forty-eight hours longer.

But, notwithstanding the calls of his enormous practice, St. John Long found time to enjoy himself. He went a great deal into fashionable society, and was petted by the great and high-born, not only because he was a notoriety, but because of his easy manners, imposing carriage, musical though hesitating voice, and agreeable disposition. He was tall and slight, but strongly built; and his countenance, thin and firmly set, although frank in expression, caused beholders to think highly of his intellectual refinement, as well as of his decision and energy. Possibly his personal advantages had no slight influence with his feminine applauders. But he possessed other qualities yet more fitted to secure their esteem—an Irish impetuosity of temperament and a sincere sympathy with the unfortunate. He was an excellent horseman, hunting regularly, and riding superb horses. On one occasion, as he was cantering round the Park, he saw a man strike a woman, and without an instant's consideration he pulled up, leaped to the ground, seized the fellow bodily, and with one enormous effort flung him slap over the Park rails.

But horse-exercise was the only masculine pastime he was very fond of. He was very temperate in his habits; and although Irish gentlemen used to get tipsy, he never did. Painting, music, and the society of a few really superior women, were the principal sources of enjoyment to which this brilliant charlatan had recourse in his leisure hours. Many were the ladies of rank and girls of gentle houses who would have gladly linked their fortunes to him and his ten thousand a year.[20] But though numerous matrimonial overtures were made to him, he persevered in his bachelor style of life; and although he was received with peculiar intimacy into the privacy of female society, scandal never even charged him with a want of honour or delicacy towards women, apart from his quackery. Indeed, he broke off his professional connection with one notorious lady of rank, rather than gratify her eccentric wish to have her likeness taken by him in that remarkable costume—or no costume at all—in which she was wont to receive her visitors.

In the exercise of his art he treated women unscrupulously. Amidst the crowd of ladies who thronged his reception-rooms he moved, smiling, courteous, and watchful, listening to their mutual confidences about their maladies, the constitutions of their relations, and their family interests. Every stray sentence the wily man caught up and retained in his memory, for future use. To induce those to become his patients who had nothing the matter with them, and consequently would go to swell the list of his successful cases, he used the most atrocious artifices.

"Ah, Lady Emily, I saw your dear sister," he would say to a patient, "yesterday—driving in the Park—lovely creature she is! Ah, poor thing!""Poor thing, Mr. Long!—why, Catherine is the picture of health!"

"Ah," the adroit fellow would answer, sadly, "you think so—so does she—and so does every one besides myself who sees her; but—but—unless prompt remedial measures are taken that dear girl, ere two short years have flown, will be in her grave." This mournful prophecy would be speedily conveyed to Catherine's ears; and, under the influence of that nervous dread of death which almost invariably torments the youthful and healthy, she would implore the great physician to save her from her doom. It was not difficult to quiet her anxious heart. Attendance at 41, Harley Street, for six weeks, during which time a sore was created on her breast by the corrosive liniment, and cured by the application of cabbage-leaves and nature's kindly processes, enabled her to go out once more into the world, sounding her saviour's praises, and convinced that she might all her life long expose herself to the most trying changes of atmosphere, without incurring any risk of chest-affection.

But Mr. Long had not calculated that, although nine hundred and ninety-nine constitutions out of every thousand would not be materially injured by his treatment, he would at rare intervals meet with a patient of delicate organization, on whom the application of his blistering fluid would be followed by the most serious consequences. In the summer of the year 1830, two young ladies, of a good Irish family, named Cashin, came to London, and were inveigled into the wizard's net. They were sisters; and the younger of them, being in delicate health, called on Mr. Long, accompanied by her elder sister. The ordinary course of inhalation and rubbing was prescribed for the invalid; and ere long, frightened by the quack's prediction that, unless she was subjected to immediate treatment, she would fall into a rapid consumption, the other young lady submitted to have the corrosive lotion rubbed over her back and shoulders. The operation was performed on the 3rd of August. Forthwith a violent inflammation was established: the wound, instead of healing, became daily and hourly of a darker and more unhealthy aspect; unable to bear the cabbage-leaves on the raw and suppurating surface, the sufferer induced her nurse to apply a comforting poultice to the part, but no relief was obtained from it. St. John Long was sent for, and the 14th (just eleven days after the exhibition of the corrosive liniment), he found his victim in a condition of extreme exhaustion and pain, and suffering from continued sickness. Taking these symptoms as a mere matter of course, he ordered her a tumbler of mulled wine, and took his departure. On the following day (Sunday, 15th) he called again, and offered to dress the wound. But the poor girl, suddenly waking up to the peril of her position, would not permit him to touch her, and, raising herself with an effort in her bed, exclaimed—

"Indeed, Mr. Long, you shall not touch my back again—you very well know that when I became your patient I was in perfect health, but now you are killing me!" Without losing his self-command at this pathetic appeal, he looked into her earnest eyes, and said, impressively—

"Whatever inconvenience you are now suffering, it will be of short duration, for in two or three days you will be in better health than you ever were in your life."

But his words did not restore her confidence. The next day (the 16th) Mr., now Sir Benjamin, Brodie was sent for, and found on the wretched girl's back an inflamed surface about the size of a plate, having in the centre a spot as large as the palm of his hand, which was in a state of mortification. The time for rescue was past. Sir Benjamin prescribed a saline draught to allay the sickness; and within twenty-four hours Catherine Cashin, who a fortnight before had been in perfect health and high spirits—an unusually lovely girl, in her 25th year—lay upon her bed in the quiet of death.

An uproar immediately ensued; and there was an almost universal cry from the intelligent people of the country, that the empiric should be punished. A coroner's inquest was held; and, in spite of the efforts made by the charlatan's fashionable adherents, a verdict was obtained from the jury of man-slaughter against St. John Long. Every attempt was made by a set of influential persons of high rank to prevent the law from taking its ordinary course. The issue of the warrant for the apprehension of the offender was most mysteriously and scandalously delayed: and had it not been for the energy of Mr. Wakley, who, in a long and useful career of public service, has earned for himself much undeserved obloquy, the affair would, even after the verdict of the coroner's jury, have been hushed up. Eventually, however, on Saturday, October 30, St. John Long was placed in the dock of old Bailey, charged with the manslaughter of Miss Cashin. Instead of deserting him in his hour of need, his admirers—male and female—presented themselves at the Central Criminal Court, to encourage him by their sympathy, and to give evidence in his favour. The carriages of distinguished members of the nobility brought fair freights of the first fashion of May-fair down to the gloomy court-house that adjoins Newgate; and belles of the first fashion sat all through the day in the stifling atmosphere of a crowded court, looking languishingly at their hero in the dock, who, from behind his barrier of rue and fennel, distributed to them smiles of grateful recognition. The Judge (Mr. Justice Park) manifested throughout the trial a strong partisanship with the prisoner; and the Marchioness of Ormond, who was accommodated with a seat on the bench by his Lordship's side, conversed with him in whispers during the proceedings. The summing up was strongly in favour of the accused; but, in spite of the partial judge, and an array of fashionable witnesses in favour of the prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

As it was late on Saturday when the verdict was given, the judge deferred passing sentence till the following Monday. At the opening of the court on that day a yet greater crush of the beau monde was present; and the judge, instead of awarding a term of imprisonment to the guilty man, condemned him merely to pay a fine of £250, or to be imprisoned till such fine was paid. Mr. St. John Long immediately took a roll of notes from his pocket, paid the mulct, and leaving the court with his triumphant friends, accepted a seat in Lord Sligo's curricle, and drove to the west end of the town.

The scandalous sentence was a fit conclusion to the absurd scenes which took place in the court of the Old Bailey, and at the coroner's inquest. At one or the other of these inquiries the witnesses advanced thousands of outrageous statements, of which the following may be taken as a fair specimen:—

One young lady gave evidence that she had been cured of consumption by Mr. Long's liniment; she knew she had been so cured, because she had a very bad cough, and, after the rubbing in all the ointment, the cough went away. An old gentleman testified that he had for years suffered from attacks of the gout, at intervals of from one to three months; he was convinced Mr. Long had cured him, because he had been free from gout for five weeks. Another gentleman had been tortured with headache; Mr. Long applied his lotion to it—the humour which caused his headache came away in a clear limpid discharge. A third gentleman affirmed that Mr. Long's liniment had reduced a dislocation of his child's hip-joint. The Marchioness of Ormond, on oath, stated that she knew that Miss Cashin's back was rubbed with the same fluid as she and her daughters had used to wash their hands with; but she admitted that she neither saw the back rubbed, nor saw the fluid with which it was rubbed taken from the bottle. Sir Francis Burdett also bore testimony to the harmlessness of Mr. Long's system of practice. Mr. Wakley, in the Lancet, asserted that Sir Francis Burdett had called on Long to ask him if his liniment would give the Marquis of Anglesea a leg, in the place of the one he lost at Waterloo, if it were applied to the stump. Long gave an encouraging answer; and the lotion was applied, with the result of producing not an entire foot and leg—but a great toe!

Miss Cashin's death was quickly followed by another fatal case. A Mrs. Lloyd died from the effects of the corrosive lotion; and again a coroner's jury found St. John Long guilty of manslaughter, and again he was tried at the Old Bailey—but this second trial terminated in his acquital.

It seems scarcely creditable, and yet it is true, that these exposures did not have the effect of lessening his popularity. The respectable organs of the Press—the Times, the Chronicle, the Herald, the John Bull, the Lancet, the Examiner, the Spectator, the Standard, the Globe, Blackwood, and Fraser, combined in doing their best to render him contemptible in the eyes of his supporters. But all their efforts were in vain. His old dupes remained staunch adherents to him, and every day brought fresh converts to their body. With unabashed front he went everywhere, proclaiming himself a martyr in the cause of humanity, and comparing his evil treatment to the persecutions that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, and Hunter underwent at the hands of the prejudiced and ignorant. Instead of uncomplainingly taking the lashes of satirical writers, he first endeavored to bully them into silence, and swaggering into newspaper and magazine offices asked astonished editors how they dared to call him a quack. Finding, however, that this line of procedure would not improve his position, he wrote his defence, and published it in an octavo volume, together with numerous testimonials of his worth from grateful patients, and also a letter of cordial support from Dr. Ramadge, M.D., Oxon., a fellow of the College of Physicians. In a ridiculous and ungrammatical epistle, defending this pernicious quack, who had been convicted of manslaughter, Dr. Ramadge displayed not less anxiety to blacken the reputation of his own profession, than he did to clear the fame of the charlatan whom he designated "a guiltless and a cruelly persecuted individual!!!" The book itself is one of the most interesting to be found in quack literature. On the title-page is a motto from Pope—"No man deserves a monument who could not be wrapped in a winding-sheet of papers written against him"; and amongst pages of jargon about humoral pathology, it contains confident predictions that if his victims had continued in his system, they would have lived. The author accuses the most eminent surgeons and physicians of his time of gross ignorance, and of having conspired together to crush him, because they were jealous of his success and envious of his income. He even suggests that the same saline draught, prescribed by Sir Benjamin Brodie, killed Miss Cashin. Amongst those whose testimonials appear in the body of the work are the then Lord Ingestre (his enthusiastic supporter), Dr. Macartney, the Marchioness of Ormond, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, the Countess of Buckinghamshire, and the Marquis of Sligo. The Marchioness of Ormond testifies how Mr. Long had miraculously cured her and her daughter of "headaches," and her youngest children of "smart attacks of feverish colds, one with inflammatory sore throat, the others with more serious bad symptoms." The Countess of Buckinghamshire says she is cured of "headache and lassitude"; and Lord Ingestre avows his belief that Mr. Long's system is "preventive of disease," because he himself is much less liable to catch cold than he was before trying it.

Numerous pamphlets also were written in defence of John St. John Long, Esq., M.R.S.L., and M.R.A.S. An anonymous author (calling himself a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Member of the Middle Temple), in a tract dated 1831, does not hesitate to compare the object of his eulogy with the author of Christianity. "But who can wonder at Mr Long's persecutions? The brightest character that ever stept was persecuted, even unto death! His cures were all perverted, but they were not the less complete; they were miraculous, but they were not the less certain!"

To the last St. John Long retained his practice; but death removed him from the scene of his triumphs while he was still a young man. The very malady, his control over which he had so loudly proclaimed, brought his career—in which knavery or self-delusion, doubtless both, played a part—to an end. He died of consumption, at the age of thirty-seven years. Even in the grave his patients honoured him, for they erected an elegant and costly monument to his memory, and adorned it with the following inscription.

"It is the fate of most men
To have many enemies, and few friends.
This monumental pile
Is not intended to mark the career,
But to shew
How much its inhabitant was respected
By those who knew his worth,
And the benefits
Derived from his remedial discovery.
He is now at rest,
And far beyond the praises or censures
Of this world.
Stranger, as you respect the receptacle of the dead
(As one of the many who will rest here),
Read the name of
John Saint John Long
without comment."

Notwithstanding the exquisite drollery of this inscription, in speaking of a plebeian quack-doctor (who, by the exercise of empiricism, raised himself to the possession of £5000 per annum, and the intimate friendship of numbers of the aristocracy) as the victim of "many enemies and few friends," it cannot be said to be open to much censure. Indeed, St. John Long's worshippers were for the most part of that social grade in which bad taste is rare, though weakness of understanding possibly may not be uncommon.

The sepulchre itself is a graceful structure, and occupies a prominent position in the Kensal Green cemetery, by the side of the principal carriage-way, leading from the entrance-gate to the chapel of the burial-ground. Immediately opposite to it, on the other side of the gravel drive, stands, not inappropriately, the flaunting sepulchre of Andrew Ducrow, the horse-rider, "whose death," the inscription informs us, "deprived the arts and sciences of an eminent professor and liberal patron." When any cockney bard shall feel himself inspired to write an elegy on the west-end grave-yard, he will not omit to compare John St. John Long's tomb with that of "the liberal patron of the arts and sciences," and also with the cumbrous heap of masonry which covers the ashes of Dr. Morrison, hygeist, which learned word, being interpreted, means "the inventor of Morrison's pills."

To give a finishing touch to the memoir of this celebrated charlatan, it may be added that after his death his property became the subject of tedious litigation; and amongst the claimants upon it was a woman advanced in years, and of an address and style that proved her to belong to a very humble state of life. This woman turned out to be St. John Long's wife. He had married her when quite a lad, had found it impossible to live with her, and consequently had induced her to consent to an amicable separation. This discovery was a source of great surprise, and also of enlightenment to the numerous high-born and richly-endowed ladies who had made overtures of marriage to the idolized quack, and, much to their surprise, had had their advances adroitly but firmly declined.

There are yet to be found in English society, ladies—not silly, frivolous women, but some of those on whom the world of intellect has put the stamp of its approval—who cherish such tender reminiscences of St. John Long, that they cannot mention his name without their eyes becoming bright with tears. Of course this proves nothing, save the credulity and fond infatuation of the fair ones who love. The hands of women decked Nero's tomb with flowers.