Henry Worsley

Henry Worsley (1844-1907) He qualified MRCS in 1867 from Manchester and applied to fill the vacancy created when Dr Hutton resigned. The Local Government Board notified Crediton Union that he was not fully qualified (as he didn’t have an apothecary’s diploma). Their reply was that there was no other applicant. He was therefore appointed as Medical Officer to Bow and Colebrooke in September 1879.

Married with three children, a year previously he had been first on the scene at a disaster at the Colosseum Theatre in Liverpool where 33 people, mostly young lads, died of suffocation as the audience panicked and fell on each other trying to get out after a malicious fire alarm.

He lasted less than a year in Bow; he disappeared without giving any notice. A note in the minute book of the Crediton Union (July 1880) records “No one knows where he is”. The Local Government Board declared he was “Unfit for the office of Medical Officer”.

He had returned to work in his birthplace, Golborne in Lancashire, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was declared bankrupt in 1882.