James Forbes, MD (1779-1837)
/James Forbes, MD is commemorated by a memorial in the South Nave Transept. One of the many offices during his career was Medical Director of Fort Pitt, Chatham.
The inscription reads:
Sacred to the Memory
Of James Forbes Esq., M.D.
Inspector General of Army Hospitals
After a service of nearly thirty five years
In almost every quarter of the globe
This able and distinguished officer returned from Ceylon in 1836
Exhausted by his able and zealous discharge of duty
To his King and Country and died the following year lamented
As he had lived respected throughout the British Army
His remains are deposited within the walls of this Cathedral
And in the vicinity of the Military Hospital which he had superintended for several years.
Born in 1779 James Forbes became & surgeon's mate on the hospital staff on 8 October 1803 until he became the Assistant Surgeon to the 30th Regiment of Foot on 9 February 1804; in October of the same year he transferred to the 15th Dragoons. In June 1809 he became Surgeon to the 95th Foot and then on to the Staff on 13 July of the same year. He became Physician to the Forces on 5 November 1812 but was put on half-pay in October 1814. He was restored to full pay on 25 June 1815. He was promoted Deputy Inspector of Hospitals (afterwards Deputy Inspector General) on 23 May 1822 and Inspector General on22 November 1836, finally retiring on half-pay on 1 June 1837. He did not live long after retirement and died on 7th November of the same year, aged 58.
During his long service, he took part in the ill-fated Walcheren Expedition in 1809. He served in the Peninsular War 1808-09, and again 1810-14.
His granddaughter married Lt-Col.D.V.O'Connell RAMC and his great-grandson, Lt.J.F.0 Connell MB was killed in action at the Battle of the Aisne, 20 September 1914, and was buried at Verneuil, near Vailly, France.
James Forbes was an M.A. of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and an M.D. of Edinburgh in 1803. He was Staff Officer to Sir James McGrigor* in the Peninsula. Among his other appointments he was in charge of the large General Hospital, Colchester, which received the sick and wounded from Waterloo, and later, Superintendent of Chelsea Hospital and Medical Director of Fort Pitt, Chatham.** He founded the Officers' Mess at Fort Pitt,which was afterwards moved to Netley and later to Millbank. His portrait hangs in the Officers' Mess, Millbank.
* Sir James McGrigor later became the Direetor of Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham. He continued the anatomical museum which had been started by his predecessor, and added a medical library, much of it at his own expense. Many books from this library still exist in the RAMC library in Millbank.
** Fort Pitt, commenced in 1805, was one of a ring of forts built for the defence of Chatham Dockyard. After the threat of Napoleon was removed the fort became a military hospital, firstly on a temporary basis in 1814 and permanently in 1824. It received many men from the Crimea during the war with Russia 1854-56, and the sick and wounded were visited by Queen Victoria on three occasions.
In 1860 the Army Medical School was set up in the fort until its removal to Netley three years later.
The fort continued to be used as a hospital till after the First World War. Much of the fort was demolished in the nineteen thirties, though many features still remain. It is now occupied by the Girls Technical School and The Medway College of Design has now been built on the rampart overlooking the River Medway.
The hospital cemetery in City Way, containing many old headstones and the memorial to men who died in the Crimean War, is still used. A soldier from the Falklands War of 1982 is buried there.
From the notebooks ‘The Naval and Military Memorials of Rochester Cathedral’ (1979)
by Roy Trett, OBE, TD,
Rochester Cathedral Chapter Library
The medieval tombs of the Presbytery and Quire Transept have had a tortured history which many effigies apparently moved and several defaced along with the medieval memorials and brasses over the Early Modern period.
Rochester Cathedral features an exceptionally large collection of Colonial-era military memorials and artefacts. This series has begun to highlight the stories behind these collections and their place in our global heritage.
