James Cockle (surgeon)

James Cockle (1782 to 1854) was a British surgeon who built one of the most successful medical practices in nineteenth century London. Born in Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of a vintner, he went up to the University of Edinburgh in 1801 and began practising as a doctor in 1805. He served as parochial surgeon at Great Oakley in Essex, worked as an apothecary in Hackney, and moved to London in the early 1820s, settling in New Ormond Street in 1829, where he developed an extremely successful medical firm. By 1837 his clients included the Prime Minister Viscount Melbourne, the Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston and the author Charles Dickens, along with an archbishop, seven dukes, fourteen bishops and dozens of other peers. He married Elizabeth Moss in 1811 and had five sons and a daughter, one of whom, Sir James Cockle, became Chief Justice of Queensland. He died in London in 1854, and his firm continued until about 1960.