For almost 200 years there had been a doctor resident in Bow. I was the twenty-ninth.
This is our story
THE MEDICAL GENTLEMEN OF BOW
George Gale Snelling
George Gale Snelling was born in Hennock, Devon, in 1749 and owned property there.
He married twice: Firstly in 1771 to Elizabeth Westlake, in Crediton where he worked for several years. They had nine children.
In 1783, whilst a surgeon in Crediton, his apprentice was Thomas Downey.
Elizabeth died in Exeter in 1801.Later the same year he married Martha Dodd, a widow from Topsham. (She had previously been married to Henry Dodd, a lieutenant in His Majesty's Navy, and before him, Samson Crapp.) George and Martha lived in St Davids, and he was a surgeon in Exeter. She died 1807.
In 1803 he was a member of the Committee of the Exeter Jennerian Society, established to promote the use of cowpox vaccine to prevent the much more serious smallpox. This committee offered free vaccination to the poor of Exeter and its neighbourhood. In 1853 vaccination of children under 4 months of age became compulsory.
He moved to Tiverton in about 1818 where he died two years later.
His grandson Francis Gale Snelling Street was a "medical gentleman" in Bow in 1835 who with his wife emigrated to New South Wales just after their marriage in 1838.
