Man-Midwife, Male Feminist: The Life and Times of George Macaulay, M.D., Ph.D. (1716-1766)

Jermyn Street, St. James

Sometime after 1753 but no later than 1756 when his cousin Tobias Smollett wrote him at his new address, George Macaulay moved from Poland Street to more fashionable quarters he had purchased in Jermyn Street, and it was there that he and Catherine established their household. Correspondence dated at their residence sometimes named St. James and sometimes Jermyn Street; a look at the schematic map explains why. [See Plate 16: Location of George Macaulay's house on Jermyn Street.] After St. James Street was widened in the early eighteenth century, the Macaulay house was on the southeast corner of the intersection.

At this writing, a commercial block of buildings dating from 1904-05 stands on the site formerly occupied by number 39 Jermyn Street, and the neighboring house immediately to the south, number 64 St. James Street. In the 1750s and 60s, this neighborhood was a good deal more fashionable than Poland Street had been, and the location offered the Macaulays several advantages. The house stood near the popular coffee and chocolate houses in St. James Street. The famous White's Coffee House, owned by Robert Arthur, frequently played host to the discussions of what was arguably the most brilliant masculine conversational society ever to meet in Britain—gatherings that from time to time had included playwright John Gay, lexicographer Samuel Johnson, satirist and Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin Jonathan Swift, physician and wit George Arbuthnot and perhaps occasionally George Macaulay—though what we know of his Page  213and Catharine's social life suggests that he may have preferred to entertain at home. Nearby were the Ozindas Chocolate House, the Smyrna, the Hutched House Tavern, and St. James Coffee House.[15] The Macaulays' house was also an easy stroll from St. James Parish Church, Westminster as St. James, Piccadilly was then known. The church had been George's home parish every since his arrival in London, and he and Catharine regularly attended services there.

Also, and much less pleasantly, nearby stood the infamous St. James's Workhouse. Built on the site of Pawlett's burial ground where a medieval plague hospital had once been, the workhouse rejoiced in an address known alternately as Pest House Close or Little Gelding's Close. There all the poor of St. James parish who were over the age of six labored six days a week from sunrise until six P.M. in the summer and until sundown it the winter spinning with flax and wool (Sheppard 211). They were fed the pauper's diet of "porridge, boiled meat, bread, cheese, and beer" at three minutely regulated daily meals. Children under six were taught, at least in theory, to read, and on Sundays the poor, after attending divine services, were allowed out until half past eight. Woe betid any who were caught drunk or begging in the streets, however, for they were fined the lion's share of the pittance they earned. The parish of St. James contracted with a Mr. Mariot, Sheppard tells us, to [mis]manage the workhouse for £200 per year. By 1741, conditions in the workhouse had become utterly intolerable: no work was done, "the stench [was] hardly supportable" the inhabitants were "almost naked and the living going to bed with the dead" (211). The workhouse was closed, and it was seemingly not in operation when George Macaulay took up residence or when Catharine joined him.

By the summer of 1762, however, the numbers of the poor in St. James Parish had grown to 1100, and their relief was costing the parish between £6000-7000 per annum (212). An act of Parliament then allowed a new committee of the St. James Vestry, called the "governors of the poor" to assume responsibility for finding ways to relieve their poverty. This body reopened the workhouse and set the poor to tasks like silk weaving and making quilted petticoats. George Macaulay's charitable impulses and proximity Page  214surely disposed him to answer at least some of the inevitable calls on his talents and training that a reopened workhouse and subsequent charitable hospital must have entailed.

Doubtless Macaulay maintained his surgery in the house at the corner of Jermyn and St. James Street. It seems that following George Macaulay's death in 1766, Catharine soon moved out, and the house then was occupied by a society physician and baronet Sir George Baker, who practiced there until 1809 (547).

While the Macaulays continued in residence, however, a socially prominent, politically active, and intellectually brilliant company gathered frequently at their table. Diarists and commentators have provided us with accounts that give us glimpses into that private world. Dr. Samuel Johnson famously reported to James Boswell a conversation on the subject of "levelling"—of social equality—that took place at the Macaulay table. Dr. Johnson, doubting the practical sincerity of Catharine's libertarian sentiments, suggested that Mrs. Macaulay invite her footman to join the company at table. To Boswell, he scoffed that she, like other "levellers" always seemed to want to level up, but never down. "She has never liked me since," Boswell reports Johnson as saying.[16]

Other guests at the Macaulay table during this period included Whigs like Thomas Hollis, Sylas Neville, and Richard Baron. Thomas Hollis frequently visited the Macaulays and in February 1764, reports Catharine "as conversing agreeably about her History, Politics & Virtu."[17] From Silas Neville's diary we gain an impression of Catharine Macaulay that Hollis' brother Timothy shared after she was widowed. Timothy Hollis found her "most agreeable," but, not surprisingly, he also found her mind occupied with the same sort of historical and political speculations that filled her writings. Though she would play card games and engage in small talk, the Page  215subjects that really interested her were never far from the forefront of her attention. This absorption Timothy Hollis found "odd" in her "but not unbecoming because uncommon."[18]

Her brother, John Sawbridge, who was to become one of George Macaulay's executors, undoubtedly visited the Macaulays frequently. Charles Townshend and Lady Dalkeith, both of whom remained friends and patrons of George Macaulay, surely called, as undoubtedly did the Bathursts who lived nearby and whose relatives had developed the neighborhood and probably had earlier owned the property that the Macaulays occupied.

From 1759 forward, Elizabeth Montagu, one of the leaders of the renowned "Blue Stockings," took Catharine Macaulay under her wing. Exercising her considerable influence on Catharine's behalf, Montagu wrote Lord Lyttleton that she "would wish Mr. Lyttleton to consider Mrs. Macaulay as a protégée of the Archbishop of Canterbury."[19]

Conversation and intellectual pursuits did not, however, consume the Macaulays' social calendar entirely. Evenings at the opera and the theater also certainly appeared on their social schedule. In May of 1760, Signor Vanneschi staged Baldassare Galluppi's opera Il Ciro Riconosciuto at Covent Garden for the benefit of the Lying-In Hospital. George was surely there, and it seems likely that he would have squired his prospective bride. Another theatrical benefit for the hospital, a performance of Every Man in his Humour at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane on December 18, 1761, [cited above] probably found the Macaulays in attendance, as did a performance at the same theater of The Wonder on October 17, 1765 (LMB, WB, Oct. 4, 1765). The Macaulays' life together was devoted, full, and rewarding.