I am firmly of the view that a blog should have regular articles about doctors who have had biscuits named after them. We have covered Dr Abernethy, and now it is the turn of Dr William Oliver of Bath, who was born in 1695 and died in 1764.

A Cornishman by birth he went to Pembroke College Cambridge to study medicine and then had a spell at Leyden before taking up residence in Bath. He quickly established himself as the doctor 'anyone who was anybody' wanted to consult.

As a result of his conduct and of his opinionated views he fell out with many of the other doctors in the city but this was not to stop him launching an appeal to found the Royal Mineral Water Hospital in 1738. When it was built he ruled the place as his own fiefdom until his retirement. He lived out his remaining days, suffering greatly from gout, until his death in 1764.

But what he is remembered for is a dry biscuit, which he developed for his patients to counter their over-rich diets ! Around 1750 he introduced the world to the 'Bath Oliver' biscuit, and shortly before his death confided the recipe to his coachman Atkins, giving him at the same time £100 in money and ten sacks of the finest wheat-flour. The fortunate recipient opened a shop at 13 Green Street, Bath, and soon acquired a large fortune. The ‘Bath Oliver’ is still a well known brand but is now the 'Fortts Bath Oliver', appreciated by connoisseurs as an accompaniment to cheese.

 An advertisement from 1884, courtesy of the British Library

A wartime advert for Fortts Bath Oliver biscuits,

At this point I had endeavoured to add a post script about the wickedly good chocolate Bath Oliver (a favourite of both John Lennon and The Queen Mother) but posterous has decided to get the text VERY confused!

Wonderfully decadent!

In 1790 Richard was living in Bourton-on-the-Water in the English Cotswolds.  In November he itemized specific groceries ordered from ‘Messrs Johnson’. The list started with:

 – 14 pounds of moist sugar,

 a pound of coffee in lead,

 Churchman’s Chocolate,

green tea, currants, split pease

orange chips and 3 Almanacks.

The reference to Mr Churchman and his chocolate is interesting. Mr Churchman may no longer be a household name for chocolate, but this was the era when the Quaker families of Cadbury and Fry,  the Rowntrees and the Terry’s of York were just starting their business empires, based on  cocoa and chocolate. Chocolate had become a fashionable (but expensive) drink, but it was not easy to make. First it had to be stewed – for a long time, and then left to settle. The cocoa butter had to be separated and skimmed off before the concoction was re-boiled with milk and, immediately before it was served, thickened with eggs. It may not have been popular with the maid who had to prepare it, but this rich, comforting concoction was believed by many to have medicinal qualities, not least as a fertility drug!

The eighteenth century saw various improvements to the process of  preparing the cocoa bean for use – and in 1795 Joseph Storrs Fry became the first person to introduce factory mechanisation into the industry when he installed a Watts steam engine to grind the beans. But in many ways the business had started with Dr Walter Churchman, who was a Bristol apothecary who opened a shop in Broadmead in the year Richard was born. In 1729 he was granted Letters Patent by George II for “the sole use of an Engine by him invented for the expeditious, fine and clean making of chocolate to greater perfection than by any other method…”.

Books on medicine recommended chocolate not just for its own qualities but as a mixer for other less palatable treatments. It was never sold as eating chocolate, but always in the form of lozenges or as a powder for drinking.

On his death Walter Churchman’s business passed to his son Charles but when he in turn died, in 1761, the business was bought by the astute Dr Joseph Fry – a fully qualified physician and apothecary. A devout Quaker, he founded what became J S Fry & Son, possibly the oldest surviving chocolate firm in the world. When Joseph died the business went to his wife Anna and an advertisement of around the time that Richard was buying his “Churchman’s chocolate”  reads:

 “Patent Cocoa. Genuine and unadulterated. Made by Anna Fry & Sons, patentees of Churchman’s chocolate Bristol. This Cocoa is recommended by the most eminent of Faculty, in Preference to every other kind of Breakfast, to such who have Tender Habits, decayed Health, weak Lungs, or scorbutic tendencies, being easy of Digestion, affording a fine and light nourishment, and greatly correcting the sharp Humours of the Constitution.”

With qualities like that, no wonder Richard bought two pounds of it at a time

– although it would have set him back around fifteen shillings (75 pence) –

rather more than the average farm labourer earned in a week. It appears to

have been enough to last for two months because the same amount was

bought in both November and the following January!

On 10^th August 1774 – Richard journeyed from London (where he lived at Number

One London Bridge) to Bourton on the Water in the Cotswolds to stay with his wife’s

sister and her husband William Snooke. They celebrated with a fine meal:

“Our Dinner: Ham, 2 chicken roasted, Colly flower, Cabbage and carrots,

Leg of Lamb boiled, pudding baked, ground rice, beans, 2 chickens boiled,

sirloin of beef, kidney beans, cheesecakes, butter, tarts. N.B. Lobster and

Crayfish were also introduced.”

Meals like this were dominated by meat – in this case at least five different

meat dishes as well as two of fish. In general vegetables were little used  - and

there was certainly no presumption that a decent meal was “meat and two

veg., of which one must be a potato”.

Vegetables were often prepared with a mixture of butter and flour, but in

this case there is a surprising number of vegetable dishes. Much of the produce

would have been grown locally, and the sirloin of beef would have been the

highlight of the meal. In a way it is strange that venison was not chosen,

for this was generally used as a way of showing off. Neither Richard nor

William could pass up on itemising in their diaries whenever they ate venison

 – it was a sign of wealth that you had your own deer-park – or that you

had influence with someone else who did.