William Becket

William Becket (1684-1738) was an English surgeon and antiquary, born at Abingdon in Berkshire. In the early years of the eighteenth century he was well known in London both for his surgical work and for his enthusiasm for the study of the past. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 11 December 1718, and in the same year he read three papers to it on the antiquity of the venereal disease, followed by one on another subject in 1724. He was an original member of the Society of Antiquaries, founded in 1717, and kept company with antiquaries such as William Stukeley, William Bowyer and Browne Willis. For some years he served as surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital in Southwark, but before 1736 he had retired to Abingdon, where he died on 25 November 1738. His publications include New Discoveries relating to the Cure of Cancers (1711 and 1712), An Enquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil (1722), and, from 1740, Practical Surgery and A Collection of Chirurgical Tracts.