# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Newnham, William

​NEWNHAM, WILLIAM (1790–1865), medical and religious writer, was born 1 Nov. 1790 at Farnham in Surrey, where his father was a general medical practitioner. He is believed to have been educated at the Farnham grammar school, and, having chosen to follow his father's profession, he pursued his medical studies at Guy's Hospital, and also in Paris. He was a favourite pupil of Sir Astley Cooper, and settled as a general practitioner at Farnham, where he remained for nearly forty-five years. He was one of the early members of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (now called the British Medical Association), which he joined in 1836. He was also one of the founders of its benevolent fund, of which he was a trustee, and also honorary secretary, treasurer, and general manager. His accession to office in 1847 was marked by a notable increase of donations and subscriptions to the fund, so that ‘to Mr. Newnham in the first place, and to Mr. Joseph Toynbee [q. v.], who became treasurer on his resignation of this office in 1855, the establishment of the fund on a firm footing is perhaps chiefly due; the fund, indeed, came to be known for a time by the name first of one and then of the other.’ On the occasion of his resignation a portrait of him, by J. Andrews, was presented to Mrs. Newnham by numerous subscribers to the fund. The inscription is dated May 1857. In the previous year Newnham had been forced by failing health to relinquish his practice. Removed to Tunbridge Wells, he died there of chronic disease of the brain on 24 Oct. 1865.
He married early, and lost his first wife on ​31 Dec. 1813, within a year of his marriage. On this occasion he wrote his first work, entitled ‘A Tribute of Sympathy addressed to Mourners’ (London, 1817), which reached an eighth edition in 1842. He married a second wife, Miss Caroline Atkinson, in 1821, and had a family of eight children, six of whom lived to maturity. His wife died in 1863.
Newnham was a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and read before it ‘An Essay on the Disorders incident to Literary Men, and on the Best Means of Preserving their Health,’ which was published as a pamphlet, 1836. His other professional writings include: ‘An Essay on Inversio Uteri,’ London, 1818; ‘Retrospect of the Progress of Surgical Literature for the year 1838–9, read before the Southern Branch of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association,’ London, 1839; two essays in Clay's ‘British Record of Obstetric Medicine’—one on an unusual case of ‘Utero-gestation,’ the other on ‘Eclampsia nutans,’ Manchester, 1848–9.
His works in general literature, which mainly deal with inquiries into mental and spiritual phenomena, include: 1. ‘The Principles of Physical, Intellectual, Moral, and Religious Education,’ 2 vols., London, 1827. 2. ‘Essay on Superstition, being an Inquiry into the Effects of Physical Influence on the Mind,’ &c., London, 1830. 3. ‘Memoir of the late Mrs. Newnham’ [his mother], London, 1830. 4. ‘The Reciprocal Influence of Body and Mind considered, as it affects the great questions of Education, Phrenology, Materialism, &c.,’ London, 1842. 5. ‘Human Magnetism, its claims to dispassionate Inquiry,’ &c., London, 1845. 6. ‘Sunday Evening Letters,’ London, 1858, 8vo.
One son, William Orde (d. 1893), was rector of New Alresford, 1879–89, and of Weston Patrick, Winchfield, from 1889 till his death. Another son, Philip Hankinson Newnham (d. 1888), vicar of Maker, Cornwall, from 1876, contributed to the ‘Transactions’ of the Psychical Research Society (Boase and Courtney, Bibl. Cornub. Suppl. 1291).
W. A. G.