For almost 200 years there had been a doctor resident in Bow. I was the twenty-ninth.
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THE MEDICAL GENTLEMEN OF BOW
Thomas Reynolds Arscott
Thomas Reynolds Arscott was born in 1842, the eldest son of surgeon Robert Arscott and Penelope Causey: his mother died when he was seven.
He became a 2nd lieutenant in the Devon Militia Artillery when 16, and was promoted to Captain in 1865 and Honorary Major in 1878. That year his father died and Thomas inherited his property, including that at Fair Park in Bow, at that time rented by the Wreford sisters, daughters of the late Samuel Wreford of Grattans.
Contemporary newspapers show he was quite a socialite, who raced at the local sailing regattas and attended the society balls.
Manslaughter Charge
On 2 August 1864, 22 year-old Lieut Arscott had been in Starcross with friends for dinner at the Courtenay Arms Inn. He returned to Exeter St Thomas station on the 9.45 evening mail train with a group of fellow officers. That evening he had been served by a waiter named John Sutton. (John Sutton, aged 68, was originally from Newport, a small village near Saffron Walden, Essex. He and his wife Jane previously ran a lodging house in St Sidwells, Exeter.)
At Starcross Station, Sutton had got into the same carriage as Arscott. After some conversation, blows were exchanged. Sutton came off the worse with extensive bruising to his face and eye. Although he briefly returned to his work he became more ill, and died on 8 September. There was an inquest, and a post mortem on 10th September showed there were no skull or rib fractures, but there were four pints of fluid in the chest cavity suggesting that he had had heart failure.
The Coroner’s jury on hearing the medical evidence concluded that the injuries he received had hastened his death and returned a verdict of manslaughter by Arscott, who was then bailed for £400.
At his trial at the Exeter Assizes March 1865, no evidence was offered by the prosecution, and Arscott was acquitted.
He had another brush with the law during the 1874 Dartmouth Regatta when he pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Alfred Milford, an Exeter Banker, for which he was fined five pounds.
T.R. Arscott died unmarried aged 38 in Exmouth on 4 May 1881. He was buried on the other side of the River Exe, in Starcross cemetery, close to his sailing club. (The "fox passant" motif on his headstone is the same as that on his great uncle John Arscott's
memorial in Sampford Courtenay church.)
In his will he left the property Fair Park in Bow jointly to Miss Elizabeth Hamlyn (1846-1924) and Miss Ida Myra Pengelley (1866-1963). It is not clear what his relationship was with Elizabeth Hamlyn, although she was was living in Exeter around 1870 before she moved to Camberwell. Ida Pengelley was the daughter of William Jenny Pengelley (1821-1892), a Major in the Royal Marines whose wife Myra (1827-1898) was the daughter of Exeter Surgeon Frederick Granby Farrant, a colleague of Robert Arscott. She lived in Exeter. Neither married. Farrant's wife Harriet nee Radford was the aunt of both Rev John Arundel Radford of Lapford, and Rev William T A Radford of Down St Mary.
Thomas Reynold Arscott's Gravestone in the cemetery at Starcross
