Charles Meymott, son of John Gilbert Meymott and Sarah Purvis Meymott, was baptised on 8 January 1813 at Christ Church, Southwark. In the 1841 census of England he was listed as being a surgeon, age 28, residing at 58 Stamford Street, Christ Church, Southwark, Surrey. On 2 September 1851 he married Sarah Elizabeth Keene at Holy Trinity, Newington. Three children were baptised at Saint Mary, Newington, Southwark – Caroline Lezzie on 25 July 1852, Charles on 19 July 1857 and Sarah Ellen on 9 June 1858. A fourth child, a son, was born at Paddington, Australia, on 6^th July, 1860.

Charles obtained his medical qualifications (LSA, 1838 and MRCS 1836) in England. He made several voyages to Adelaide as the ship’s Surgeon superintendent (1849, 1850, 1852). A Surgeon superintendent was an important position at that time – not a member of the ship’s crew, but an independent government agent employed by the authorities responsible for the transport of emigrants (or convicts).

On 11 March, 1858 Dr Meymott, surgeon superintendent, arrived on the ‘Escort’ on his final journey to Australia. He settled in NSW in 1858, where he became Medical Officer to the Sydney Homœopathic Dispensary, and along with Dr Bellamy, one of two homœopathic practitioners in Sydney in 1858.

In the same year, 1858, Dr Meymott gave a lecture at the School of Arts in Sydney on “New Truths and Their Reception”, in which he discussed the possible reasons for which medical practitioners might reject new ideas such as those put forward by the exponents of homœopathy. [For more information, see the article by Barbara Armstrong, Australia’s First Home-Grown Homœopath in Similia December 2007, Vol 19:2.]

In 1863 and 1865 Dr Meymott was listed in Sand’s Sydney Directory as being a surgeon. In 1863 he was at 107 Bathurst Street, and from 1864 to 1867 he was at 123 Liverpool Street. He died in Sydney in 1867, his funeral notice being advertised on 26 June. Mrs Meymott and her four children returned to England on the ‘Rigleman’ on August 21, 1867.

One of Dr Meymott’s brothers was a district judge in NSW, who, in 1865, had an encounter with the bushranger, Ben Hall and his gang.

© Barbara Armstrong