A pox on them all - or rather not

Regular readers of my blog will have endured the occasional lapse into necrophilia as we've wandered around graveyards, churchyards and other monumenta mortuis. In my humble opinion (Humble? Humble? You? Do I hear someone say?), some of the great features of English churches and cathedrals are the often beautifully sculpted memorial plaques that line their walls. Sometimes these mural monuments refer to a person interred nearby, but often they commemorate someone who is buried elsewhere. I love them for the small glimpses they provide of otherwise forgotten or unknown lives. Reading about them gives them renewed life, if only momentarily.

 

One such we came across in Lichfield Cathedral, just inside the visitor's entrance: a memorial to Lady Mary Wortley Montague. She is buried in London, I assume, as that is where she died, but it is in Litchfield that she is remembered.

 

Just in case you can't make it out, even after you've clicked on the above image to enlarge it, here is the full inscription.

Sacred to the Memory
of
The Right Honorable
Lady MARY WORTLEY MONTAGUE
Who happily introduced from Turkey
into this country
The Salutary Art
Of inoculating the Small-Pox.
Convinc'd of its Efficacy
She first tried it with Success
On her own Children
And then recommended the practice of it
To her fellow-Citizens.
Then by her Example and Advice
We have soften'd the Virulence
And escaped the danger of this malignant Disease.
To perpetuate the Memory of such Benevolence,
And express her Gratitude
For the benefit She herself has receiv'd
From the alleviating Art,
This Monument is erected
by
HENRIETTA INGE
Relict of THEODORE WILLIAM INGE, Esq.r.
And Daughter of Sir JOHN WROTTESLEY Baronet
In the Year of OUR LORD MDCCLXXXIX

I didn't know anything about Lady Mary Wortley Montagu but it wasn't difficult to establish some facts. I learned that she lived from 1689-1762, how she accompanied her husband to Turkey when he served there as ambassador and how she learned from the Turks about inoculating for smallpox. I gleaned a little about her efforts (half a century before Edward Jenner*) to educate the English about inoculation and I read that she was a famous letter writer and a subject of Alexander Pope's satirical pen. It sounds as if she was quite a woman.

 But I could find nothing about the commissioner of the memorial, Henrietta Inge, other than what the inscription tells us. Her husband was a son of the Inge family which held the manor in Thorpe Constantine, Staffordshire, and she came from one of the great families of that county, the Wrottesleys. But what personal experience led her to express such extravagant gratitude for 'the benefit she herself has receiv'd from the alleviating Art?' Logic says that if wasn't Henrietta herself then it must have been someone close to her (a child, husband, parent, dear friend?) who had been spared the scourges of smallpox due to an inoculation à la Lady Mary. We'll never know but at least we have given a little thought to Henrietta Inge and her kind gesture towards the memory of Lady Mary.

* And for those who are wondering: Edward Jenner's discovery was not inoculation, but vaccination, using the related cowpox virus instead of smallpox to produce immunity. Inoculation meant that an incision was made in a healthy patient and a small amount of live smallpox (in the form of pus from an infected person) was introduced into the wound to build up immunity. Which would you prefer? Me? I'm a Jenner man. Coincidentally, one of our friends is a direct descendant of Edward Jenner but that's a story for BJ to tell.