Portrait of William Babington (1756-1833)
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Portrait in oils of William Babington, by James Tannock, c.1820. (GSL/POR/2)
Provenance: Presented to the Society by Mrs M Peile, January 1949.
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William Babington (1756-1833) was born in Portglenone in County Antrim. He apprenticed to a surgeon in Londonderry and in 1877 completed his surgical training by becoming dresser to James Franck snr for six months at Guy’s Hospital. [Franck’s nephew, also called James Franck (1768-1843), would be another founder of the Society.] After four years as assistant surgeon to the Haslar naval hospital in Portsmouth at the age of 25 Babington returned to Guy’s as an apothecary in 1781 but also lectured on chemistry in the medical school.
To become a physician (a higher status role during that period) you had to have a medical degree, so Babington resigned his post as apothecary in 1794 and gained his MD from the University of Aberdeen in 1795. He was elected assistant physician to Guy’s Hospital the same year, becoming full physician in 1802. The pressures of his successful private practice led Babington to quickly resign but was persuaded by the hospital governors to return as assistant physician, a post which he held until 1813. Coincidentally James Laird (1779-1841), another of the 13 founders of the Geological Society, replaced Babington as full physician at Guy’s.
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Portrait of Sir Humphrey Davy. Engraving by Lonsdale and Thomson, published by Fisher, Son & Co, 1829. (GSL/POR/56/34)
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It was in Babington’s house in early 1807 that the first informal meetings of the geophilists’ group which would become the Geological Society took place. His hospital duties meant the meetings had to take place at 7am before he went on his morning rounds.
Humphrey Davy, another founding member, pleaded for the breakfast gatherings to be held in the evenings remarking, “The chills of November mornings are very unfavourable to order in the pursuit of science and I conceive that we should all think better and talk better after experiencing the effects of roast beef and wine than in preparing for tea, coffee and buttered buns.”
Babington was more a mineralogist than a geologist and never submitted any papers to the Society’s publications. He did, however, present to the Society its first mineral cabinet in 1808.
The Society’s first two premises, in Garden Court and Lincoln’s Inn respectively, were shared with another newly formed organisation - the Medical and Chirurgical Society - of which Babington was also a member.
Babington served as President between 1822-1824.