Roy Porter

• 1. Introduction

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  Roy Porter died on the 3rd of March 2002 while cycling, five months into a retirement he had barely started. He had moved to St Leonards-on-Sea with plans to learn the saxophone, tend an allotment, and travel. The poet Michael Hofmann had called him "a one-man book factory." The description was accurate: Porter had written or edited more than 100 books. The image of this prolific historian on a bicycle, saxophone lessons ahead of him, is a strange one. What drove a boy from south London through the highest levels of British academia? And what did it mean when Porter himself said he was not, at heart, a medical historian?

• 2. Cambridge and Geology

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  Wilson's School in Camberwell is where Porter received his secondary education. He won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, where his supervisor was J. H. Plumb. His cohort included Simon Schama and Andrew Wheatcroft. Porter earned a double starred first, one of Cambridge's highest academic distinctions. He became a junior Fellow in 1968 and began studying under Robert M. Young. He also started lecturing on the British Enlightenment, a subject that would anchor much of his later research.

  In 1972, Porter moved to Churchill College as Director of Studies in History. By 1977, he had become Dean of the college. His doctorate, completed in 1974, examined the history of geology as a scientific discipline. The thesis was published in 1977 as The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660-1815. Cambridge also promoted him to Lecturer in European History that same year. He would leave for London in 1979, joining an institution that would define his remaining professional decades.

• 3. The Wellcome Years

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  In 1979, Porter joined the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, part of University College London, as a lecturer. He remained there for more than twenty years. By 1993, he had been appointed Professor of Social History. He served briefly as the institute's director. His retirement came in September 2001.

  Porter married five times. His first wife was Sue Limb, whom he married in 1970. Jacqueline Rainfray became his second wife in 1983. He married Dorothy Watkins in 1987. His fourth wife was Hannah Augstein. Natsu Hattori was his wife at the time of his death. He was known for needing very little sleep. He gave an annual history lecture to the students at Wilson's School, Wallington. In 1985, he co-published A History of Clinical Psychiatry with G. E. Berrios. That collaboration was the first of several focused specifically on the history of psychiatry.

• 4. The Patient's Perspective

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  Porter published A Social History of Madness in 1987, approaching mental illness through the experiences of those who had lived through it. That same year, Mind-Forg'd Manacles traced the history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency. Health for Sale, published in 1989, examined quackery in England between 1660 and 1850. Where previous historians had centered the doctor, Porter insisted on centering the patient. Porter once said he was "not really a medical historian," but rather "a social historian and an 18th century man."

  The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, published in 1997, attempted a medical history of all humanity from antiquity to the modern era. Doctor of Society, his 1991 study of Thomas Beddoes, examined one physician's role in late Enlightenment England. Porter also edited History of Science for many years and co-edited History of Psychiatry with G. E. Berrios from 1989. Bodies Politic, published in 2001, traced disease, death, and medicine in Britain from 1650 to 1900. Alongside this body of work, a second set of books was taking shape. These centered on the British Enlightenment and the social history of London.

• 5. Enlightenment and London

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  Porter published English Society in the Eighteenth Century in 1982. That book mapped the texture of British social life in the era he had been studying since his Cambridge lectures. His 1988 work Edward Gibbon: Making History turned to one of the eighteenth century's most celebrated chroniclers. The Enlightenment appeared in 1990 and was revised in 2001. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World appeared in 2000. It argued that Britain's Enlightenment had shaped the modern world more than was generally acknowledged.

  London: A Social History, published in 1994, brought his methods to the capital itself. He traced patterns of disease, wealth, and political culture across centuries of London's past. The Rise and Fall of London's Town Centres, published in 1996, connected historical work to questions of contemporary urban planning. Porter and G. S. Rousseau first collaborated on The Ferment of Knowledge in 1980. They went on to co-edit volumes on sexuality, exoticism, and gout over the following decades. His work also took him to radio studios and public lecture halls, where he made many appearances as a speaker.

• 6. A Public Scholar

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  Porter was an original presenter of BBC Radio 3's Night Waves. He was scheduled to appear on that programme at the moment of his death, to discuss doctors in literature. He also spoke at public events of many kinds and was praised for his oratorical gifts. The American Historical Association awarded him the Leo Gershoy Award in 1988. In 1994, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He was also made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

  A plaque at 13 Camplin Street, New Cross Gate, London, was unveiled by the Mayor of Lewisham on the 5th of June 2008. His memorial service was held on the 22nd of April 2002 at St Pancras Parish Church. In 2002, the Wellcome Trust published Remembering Roy Porter in his memory. Roberta Bivins and John V. Pickstone edited a memorial volume in 2007, Medicine, Madness and Social History: Essays in Honour of Roy Porter. William F. Bynum contributed a biographical sketch to that collection. The Cambridge History of Medicine appeared in 2006, nearly thirty years after The Making of Geology had marked the beginning of his publishing career.