A Century of Service - Eoin O'Brien

The Voluntary Hospital Movement and the Dublin School
Sir Philip Crampton (1777–1858).
Bust, College Green.
“About six feet in height, slightly framed, elegantly proportioned, and elastic as cork
wood; and if instead of the Gothic fabrics, by which his graceful figure was distorted,
he had been habited in Lincoln’s Green, he might doubtless have posed as the model
of James Fitzjames. A blue coat, with scarcely anything deserving the name of skirts;
a pair of doe-skin breeches, that did every justice to the ingenious maker; top boots,
spurs of imposing longitude, and a whip, called a “blazer” in his country, completed
the costume of this dandy nimrod.” 18 Crampton was created a baronet by Queen
Victoria in 1839 and was commemorated until recently by the rather strange bronze
fountain, backed by a leafy phallus that stood at College Street, and bore an
inscription even odder than its design: “This fountain has been placed here – a type
of health and usefulness – by the friends and admirers of Sir Philip Crampton, Bart.,
Surgeon-General to her Majesty’s Forces.” 19 He lived at number fourteen Merrion
Square, a house famous for the pear tree planted in the year of Waterloo. He died in
1858, at the age of 81 years, and according to his wish, his body encased in Roman
cement was interred in the cemetery at Mount Jerome, a mode of burial that must
have caused some distress to his pall bearers. 20 Crampton was not the only doctor to
perpetuate the eccentricities of life in death; Jonathan Osborne of Mercer’s hospital
had been incapacitated by severe rheumatism and was buried standing, so that he
might be first out on judgement day, and Swift’s physician Robert Helsham had
directed “that before my coffin be nailed up, my head be severed from my body and
that my corps be carried to the place of burial by the light of one taper only at the
dead of night without hearse or pomp attended by my domesticks only.” 21
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