At the beginning of the nineteenth century, though, Parkinson was equally well known as a geologist. Along with William Buckland and George Greenough, he was one of the founder members of the Geological Society and had embarked on a detailed survey of everything known about the ‘Ante-Diluvian World’. To Mantell in the Lewes library eagerly taking in the descriptions of the entire vegetable and animal fossil kingdom, Parkinson’s work was an inspiration. Putting aside any scruples about imposing on such an eminent gentleman, he made an appointment to visit Parkinson in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, in East London.
His nervousness at seeking ‘the pleasure and the privilege’ of such an acquaintance was soon dispelled by James Parkinson’s ‘mild, courteous manner’, Mantell wrote, and the enthusiasm with which he ‘explained to me the principal objects in his cabinets and pointed out every source of information on fossil remains’. Parkinson had assiduously gathered details of Georges Cuvier’s studies in Paris and could tell Mantell of his famous discoveries: the giant extinct mammals, the mastodon, Megatherium and mammoth, and ancient species of crocodiles found around Honfleur and Le Havre. Cuvier believed that the fossil bones of crocodiles came from limestone beds of ‘very high antiquity … considerably older than those which contain the bones of quadrupeds’.
Parkinson had been greatly influenced by the pioneering work of the surveyor William Smith. Whereas Werner, in Saxony, identified rocks principally on the basis of their mineral composition, Smith had recognised that fossils could be used to help identify the beds. In his publication of 1811 Parkinson was careful to classify fossils according to the strata in which they were found; each layer of rock with its entombed fossils was for him a ‘former world’ which held the secrets of the history of the globe.
Parkinson, like Buckland, was intrigued by the conflict between geology and religion and was resolved ‘to shrink from no question … however repugnant to popular opinion’. He concluded that the account of Moses in the Bible ‘is confirmed in every respect, except as to the age of the world, and the distance of time between the completion of different parts of Creation’. Although there was no way of proving the earth’s antiquity, he acknowledged that the formation of the globe and the creation of life ‘must have been the work of a vast length of time’. Following an idea first raised by scholars in the eighteenth century, he reasoned that if the word ‘day’ in Genesis was used ‘to designate indefinite periods in which particular parts of the great work of Creation was accomplished, no difficulty will then remain’.
Parkinson fired the young Mantell with his romantic description of ‘former worlds’ buried in the rock. Each stratum enveloped evidence of a vanished existence, and the geologist could ‘begin to fathom the different revolutions which had swept over the earth in ages antecedent to all human record or tradition’. Parkinson wrote: ‘even the enormous chains of mountains which seem to load the surface of the earth are vast monuments in which these remains of former ages are entombed … they are hourly suffering those changes by which after thousands of years they become the chief constituent parts of gems; the limestone which forms the humble cottage of the peasant, or the marble which adorns the splendid palace of the Prince.’ The mountains, the hills and the land beneath their feet: all these were vast tombs more astounding than the pyramids.
It was through meetings with men like Parkinson that Mantell’s ambitions began to take shape. It was, he thought, the role of the scientist ‘to unveil God’s secrets … and unravel the mysteries of the beautiful world through which he was destined to pass’. James Parkinson had found time for geology while practising as a doctor. Mantell, too, would carry on his childhood dream. He would devote every spare minute to exploring these ancient memorials to a buried past that had existed, it seemed, before Adam. When he returned home to Sussex, he planned to make a systematic study of the strata and fossils of the county, a subject which he viewed as ‘replete with interest and instruction’. This married together his fascination with the subject and his desire to make a name for himself that might bring back honour to his family name.
At the age of twenty-one he gained his diploma of membership of the Royal College of Surgeons and returned to Lewes, where he was immediately offered a partnership with his former master, James Moore. It was soon apparent that he faced a gruelling workload as a country doctor. Epidemics of cholera, typhoid and smallpox still raged. ‘An immense number of Persons in this Town and neighbourhood are ill with Typhus Fever,’ he recorded in his diary on one occasion. ‘I have visited upwards of 40 or 50 patients every day for some time: yesterday I visited 64. The small pox is also very prevalent, 14 have died with it, Taylor in Malling Street who had it in 1794 is now covered with various pustules and has been very ill.’ Armed with little more than boxes of leeches, which were sent from London in boxes of two hundred, he struggled on against these deadly diseases.
His practice included attendance on the sick poor of three parishes, for which he was paid £20 a year, and treating the inmates of the Poor House at St John’s, near Lewes. Long before the development of emergency services, the local doctor provided the only care, even for the severely injured: ‘This morning I was summoned to Ringmer, a poor woman on the Green, Mrs Tasker, had set fire to her clothes and was most dreadfully burnt, it is scarcely possible she should survive.’ For five weeks he visited for an hour every day to change her dressings. When she died, he noted, ‘I am almost fatigued to death.’
There were numerous mills in the district for grinding corn, for producing rapeseed oil and flour, and for brewing or malting, and even for producing paper. With child labour, accidents were common and, without anaesthetic, invariably traumatic: ‘I was called to a most distressing accident at Chailey Mill. A poor boy got his clothes entangled by an upright post that was rapidly revolving; the lad in consequence was whirled round with great velocity and his legs were dashed against a beam. It was considered absolutely necessary to amputate the left leg above the knee, but the constitutional shock was so great that the poor boy died the next day.’
The hours of Gideon Mantell’s medical practice were long and unpredictable, especially since he excelled at midwifery, delivering between two and three hundred babies a year. At a time when the average mortality for women in some hospitals was as high as one in thirty, Mantell had only two deaths in over two thousand births during fifteen years. His great success came at a price: ‘frequently I have been up for six or seven nights in succession: an occasional hour’s sleep in my clothes being the only repose I could obtain’. Nonetheless, with his conscientiousness and tireless energy he gradually increased the profits on the practice from £250 a year to £750.
Despite the immense pressures of his medical workload, Mantell was prepared to sacrifice his few leisure hours to make headway in geology as well. With the carelessness of youth he spared himself nothing, often studying until the small hours and rising after just four hours’ sleep, to see his patients before embarking on some geological expedition.
There were numerous local pits and quarries such as Jenner’s quarry, Malling Hill Pit, Malling Street Pit, Southerham Pit, each laying bare the strata of Sussex. Following the approach of William Smith, he aimed to construct a geological chart of the correct sequence of the local rocks. He paid the pit labourers for any interesting fossils that he could add to his cabinet, and soon became familiar with the beautiful creatures of this former sea. To help identify the invertebrates, Mantell wrote to James Sowerby, a naturalist who was compiling a catalogue of fossil shells. There were many different species of ammonite, the extinct mollusc with a spiral shell that had so enchanted him as a child. In gratitude for the perfect specimens Mantell sent, Sowerby named one species after him: Ammonites mantelli. Embedded with the ammonites in the chalk were bivalves, sponges and another extinct mollusc, the belemnites, with their characteristic conical shell divided into chambers.
As Mantell gained in confidence, he established a network of correspondence