Interlude 6

Abel Rooker (1787–1867), surgeon

Janet Kisz

Abel Rooker was a surgeon in Darlaston, Staffordshire. Like the majority of bills submitted by doctors and surgeons to parish overseers, those submitted by Rooker to the parish of St Lawrence were very detailed, setting out precisely what he had done for his patients. Giving an insight into the level of care that the Old Poor Law system could encompass, a bill from 1816 shows that he passed a seton (to assist in the drainage of fluid) into the neck of John Adams; amputated the thumb of the widow Hubbard’s son; opened a large tumour on the side of Richard Nightingale; and reduced the arm of Ann Cotterill’s child.1 The range of treatments Rooker provided for Darlaston’s poor can be compared to the care given to Thomas Woolgar in East Hoathly and contrasted with the neglect of the poor discussed in Chapter 6.2

The payment of bills from physicians constituted significant outlays for parish overseers. As they tended to be submitted sometime after treatment had been given, their detailed nature suggests that Abel was in the habit of accounting clearly for any expenditure. It was only later (and certainly by 1822) that Rooker was paid by Darlaston under the terms of a half-yearly contract amounting to £7 10s (Figure 6.2).3

Rooker came from a distinguished background. His parents were active in a Dissenting congregation and his family participated in the Walsall riots of 1751.4 His great-grandfather Samuel Rooker (c.1694–1768) was a cooper from West Bromwich and a member of the Dissenting congregation that met at Bank Court in Walsall.

Figure 6.2 Payment to Abel Rooker for half a year’s contract, for Darlaston Workhouse, Staffordshire, 1822. Reproduced courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office.

Rooker was born in 1787, the son of James and Mary Rooker, and baptized in the independent chapel in Walsall.5 He was apprenticed to the surgeon Francis Watkin Weaver, a member of the same Dissenting congregation. Weaver paid apprentice tax for Abel in 1803.6 Such an apprenticeship would not have been cheap, but it would have opened up opportunities for a professional career that did not require a university degree. Provincial medical schools like Birmingham’s did not emerge until the 1820s.

Rooker was married twice, first to Susanna Brevitt and then to Frances Fletcher. He fathered eleven children, retired as a surgeon in 1854 and then moved to Lower Gornal, where his eldest son was the vicar. He died in 1867. Three of Abel’s sons became Anglican clergymen during a period when the evangelicalism underpinning Nonconformist communities helped to reshape the Anglican Church.

Rooker was one of several Nonconformists involved in parish relief in the Midlands. The role they played is also evident in Uttoxeter’s overseers’ vouchers relating to Thomas Norris and to the Summerland family, and in the diaries of Congregational missionaries working in Birmingham’s back streets used by Chris Upton in his research on the Birmingham parish workhouse.7

1 SRO, D1149/6/2/1/3/38, 11 Sept. 1816.

2 See Interlude 1 (J. Irvin, ‘Thomas Woolgar, the mystery man’) in this volume.

3 SRO, D1149/6/2/7/5/12, 29 Sept. 1822.

4 A. P. F. Sell, ‘The Walsall riots, the Rooker family and eighteenth century dissent’, Transactions of the Lichfield and South Staffordshire Archaeological Society, xxv (1985), 50–71.

5 TNA, RG/4/2702, Walsall, Bridge Street Chapel (Independent), Births and baptisms, born 18 Oct. 1787, baptised 20 Feb. 1788.

6 TNA, IR1/71, Country apprentices, 1710–1808, 26 Jan. 1803.

7 For further details see jmkrolik, ‘Abel Rooker, surgeon in Darlaston (1787–1867)’ parts 1 and 2 (2021), The Poor Law <https://thepoorlaw.org/abel-rooker-surgeon-in-darlaston-1787-1867-part-1> <https://thepoorlaw.org/abel-rooker-surgeon-in-darlaston-1787-1867-part-2-non-
conformist-antecedents>; P. Collinge, ‘William Summerland (1765–1834), butcher, Uttoxeter’ (2018), The Poor Law <https://thepoorlaw.org/william-summerland-1765-1834-butcher-uttoxeter> [accessed 20 June 2021]. The blog posts are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0); C. Upton, The Birmingham Parish Workhouse, 1730–1840 (Hatfield, 2020).