Samuel Cleverley, M.D., was born at Gravesend, and was the son of Mr. William Cleverley, a shipbuilder in that town. He received his early education at a school in Rochester, and selecting medicine as his profession, was sent for two years to the borough hospitals and then to Edinburgh, where he graduated doctor of medicine 24th June, 1797 (D.M.I. de Anasarca). Soon afterwards he visited the continent and passed some considerable time at Halle, Gottingen, Vienna, and Paris.

He was detained a prisoner in France, and remained there for eleven years. Fontainbleau, Verdun, and Valenciennes, were successively assigned him as places of confinement, and at the latter he spent the greater part of the long period of his detention. This depôt was one of the most numerous in France, and the prisoners at the time of Dr. Cleverley’s arrival were in the greatest want of medical assistance. He accord-ingly proposed to the Committee of Verdun, an association of the principal British officers and gentlemen in France, charged with the general distribution of charitable succours obtained from England, to give them his gratuitous care, which was gladly accepted, and a dispensary was, in consequence, established, though not without great difficulties from the French military authorities. Such, however, were its manifest advantages, that the baron de Pommereul, prefect of the département du Nord, during his official visit to the depot, sent for Dr. Cleverley, and thanking him for the services he had already rendered to his countrymen, authorised him in writing not only to continue them, but even to take charge of the British in the public hospital.(1)

Dr. Cleverley returned to England in 1814, and had the satisfaction of receiving for his services abroad the marked thanks of the managing committee of Lloyd’s. Shortly afterwards, he fixed his residence in London, and on the 22nd December, 1815, was admitted a Licentiate of the College of Physicians. He was appointed one of the physicians to the London Fever hospital, but did not long survive, and died at his house in Queen Anne-street on the 10th November, 1824.

William Munk

[(1) Authentic Memoirs of the most eminent Physicians, &c. 2nd edit. 8vo. Lond., 1818, p. 479 et seq.]