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William Tuckwell was born in c.1785 and originated from Aynho in Northamptonshire, where he attended the grammar school.

He was apprenticed to a Woodstock surgeon, and then became a pupil of John Abernethy at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

In 1808 at the age of 23 he came to Oxford, but before he was allowed to work there he had to be matriculated as a “Chirurgus” by the University, and his matriculation duly took place on 10 November 1808.

In March 1809 he was elected Surgeon to the Radcliffe Infirmary.

In about 1816 he moved to 64 High Street in St Peter-in-the-East parish, which was to be his home for the next 26 years.

His doors always stood open for the first two hours of the day to the poor, for whom he waived his fee.

The 1841 census shows William Tuckwell living at 64 High Street ( in the parish of St Peter in the East) where he had his practice. With him were his wife Margaret and eight of their nine surviving children, namely Ann, Harriett, Henry, Margaret, Ellen, David, Lewis, and Edward. Also living with them were a governess, five female servants, and one male servant. His eldest son, William Tuckwell junior (11) was boarding at Edward Wickham's school, Eagle House, at Brook Green, Hammersmith.

Early in 1842 he moved to Cowley House. (This is now the Hall Building of St Hilda’s College, and until 1887 it was deemed to be situated in an outlying part of the village of Cowley rather than in Oxford.)

In 1842 William’s wife Margaret Tuckwell died at the age of 38 at home in Cowley House. Her memorial on the wall of St Peter-in-the-East Church (below) reads: “In Memory of Margaret Tuckwell, who died November 23rd 1842. A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, her children arise up and call her blessed”.

In 1843 William Tuckwell bought Cowley House.

He was elected FRCS in January 1844.

William Tuckwell died at Cowley House on 20 September 1845 at the age of 60 and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 27 September 1845. His memorial on the same wall as that of his wife reads: “In Memory of William Tuckwell, Surgeon to the Radcliffe Infirmary, who lived many years in this parish and died in his work Sept. 20th 1845.

The Revd Edward Hill wrote in his (unpublished) diary for Saturday 20 September 1845:

Shortly after we returned home were much shocked by the information of the sudden death of Mr Tuckwell. He was seized while at dinner with his children about half past three with a paralytic seizure which at once affected one side, & which appears to have been clearly followed by apoplexy. He spoke no more, altho’ there appeared some slight symptom of consciousness. He expired at 8 o’clock. He leaves 9 children: the oldest 16 next month: the youngest 5 last June.

And on the next day he wrote:

Mrs Hill went directly after breakfast to Mr Tuckwell’s to see if she could be of any service to the children. she found Miss Sophia Gutch & Mrs Parker there – with whom she staid and conducted a domestic service with them and the children and servants.

The will of “William Tuckwell, Surgeon of Oxford” (date of probate 12 November 1845) was deposited at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury: ref PROB 11/20278. It was an extremely short will, reading simply:

I William Tuckwell of the County of Oxford Surgeon being in good bodily health and of sound mind do make this my last will and testament I give & bequeath all the property which I may be possessed of to my dear children, share & share alike and I intreat my kind friends Charles Wingfield Esqre of Oxford Surgeon and Andrew Bridgewater of Iffley Gentleman to take upon them the trouble of executing the above in trust for my said children

Three of his five sons were matriculated at the University of Oxford after their father's death:

• William Tuckwell junior (New College, 11 October 1848, aged 18)
• Henry Matthews Tuckwell (Lincoln College, 17 March 1852, aged 17)
• Lewis Stacey Tuckwell (Magdalen College, 14 January 1858, aged 18)

At the time of the 1851 census seven of the nine surviving Tuckwell children (Anne, Harriet, the second Margaret, Ellen, (David) Gregorie, Lewis, and Edward) were living at Cowley House with a superintendent called Miss Nutt and their cook. The two eldest sons were away from home: William Tuckwell junior (21) was at New College, where he was an undergraduate, but Henry Matthews Tuckwell  (16) is hard to find..

Tuckwell’s son William Tuckwell junior wrote thus about his father in his Reminiscences of Oxford:

But by far the most conspicuous and interesting of Lockhart’s Hakims [see Lockhart’s novel, Reginald Dalton, set in the 1820s] was Tuckwell, for thirty years – from 1815 to 1845 – the leading Oxford surgeon. In costume and demeanour he was a survival from the more picturesque and ceremonious past. He pervaded Oxford in a claret-coloured tail coat, with velvet collar, canary waistcoat with gilt buttons, light brown trousers, two immense white cravats propping and partly covering the chin, a massive well-brushed beaver hat. His manner and address were extraordinarily winning; a contemporary described him to me long ago, in a letter which I happened to preserve, as “the most fascinating man I ever met, a favourite with all who knew him; his cheery brightness invaluable in a sick room, supported as it was by his high repute and skill”.

Mr Abernethy, discontinuing practice, entreated him to take his place; he was, said Sir Benjamin Brodie to me in 1853, “one of the cleverest surgeons of his day.” He was not a member of the University, but had been educated at the then famous Aynho Grammar School, whose eccentric master, Mr Leonard, was known for his scholarship and for his addiction to green tea, which he kept ever by his side to moisten his construes in Tacitus and Horace. So Tuckwell knew his Latin books minutely, and could quote them effectively. He was pupil to Abernethy, who became much attached to him; his dinner table after his marriage held a magnificent epergne, a wedding present from the famous surgeon. Amongst his comrades were the lads known afterwards as Dr Skey and Sir George Burrows. He worked hard at his profession, and made himself a proficient besides in French, Spanish, and Italian.

He went to Oxford, without introduction, friends, or money, about 1808, but rose rapidly into practice, establishing himself in the house opposite Magdalen elms, which a few old Oxford men still associate with his name, and was to bear in later years the door-plate of his son. His name is not only embalmed in Lockhart’s novel, but points the moral of a bitter passage in the “Oxford Spy”:

If tutors punish what they seldom shun,
Severe to all who do – as they have done –
Their wild career at once pursue, condemn,
Give fees to Tuckwell and advice to them.

His son went on to describe how William Tuckwell was one of the best piquet and whist players in England, and also skilled at chess, adding:

His heart was as large as his brain was keen; if he fascinated his equals, he no less won the love and gratitude of his humbler neighbours. During the thirty years of his celebrity his doors stood open for the first two hours of every over-busy day to the poor who chose to come, and who streamed in from the country round to be tended without a fee.

He devoted to their care gratuitously the same minute and searching skill, the same unerring memory and rapid judgment, the same urbane and cordial presence, which had made him popular and fashionable among those who were glad to pay him highly for these gifts; and when the large heart ceased to beat and the keen brain to toil, while amongst a troop of friendly mourners I followed his remains along streets darkened by the signs of universal sorrow, I saw the crowd of poor – to be counted, it was said, by hundreds – gathered in from village and from slum for a final tribute to the friend who had dispensed among them health and healing through so many years. He was the last of the old Oxford school; the “Brilliant Man” – to quote from Henry Bulwer – amongst his University compeers, as was Canning among a wider and more high-placed set. He retained the “grand manner” of a fading age; the refined and pointed, not conventional and effusive, courtesy to women; the bounteous fund of ever-ready talk, alternating not monologist, seasoned not swamped with allusion, recitation, epigram.

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The nine surviving children of William Tuckwell

William Tuckwell junior (1829–1919)

William Tuckwell junior was the author of 24 books and papers, including Reminiscences of Oxford and Reminiscences of a Radical Parson.
See his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

William attended Slatter’s School at Rose Hill, followed by a preparatory school in Hammersmith and Winchester College. He then went up to New College, Oxford in 1848, obtaining his B.A. in 1852.

He was ordained in the mid-1850s and for a short period was curate of St Mary Magdalen Church in Oxford.

He was then Master of New College School from 1857 to 1864.

On 13 July 1858 at Iffley, William Tuckwell junior of Oxford married Rosa Strong, the daughter of Henry Strong of Iffley. a Captain in the army. One of the witnesses, Rosa's sister Emily Strong, later known as Emilia, was to marry Mark Pattison, the Rector of Lincoln College, at the same church on 10 September 1861, with William conducting the ceremony.

At the time of the 1861 census William Tuckwell (31) was the Headmaster of New College School and was living at 28 & 29 Holywell Street with his wife Rosa (30) and their baby daughter, also Rosa, plus seven boarders (a teacher of Mathematics and six pupils) and five house servants.

From 1864 to 1878 he was the Head of the Collegiate School at Taunton, and the 1871 census shows him living at the school with his wife Rosa, and their three daughters Rosa Tuckwell (11), Gertrude Mary Tuckwell (9), and Marion Ethel Tuckwell (4).

in 1878 New College appointed him to the living of Stockton in Warwickshire, and he was Rector there until 1893. The 1881 census shows him living at the Rectory House with his wife and daughters and his young son Henry Maurice S. Tuckwell Three schoolboys were boarding with them, and they had a a housekeeper, housemaid, and cook.

From 1893 to 1905 he was Rector of Waltham in Lincolnshire, and the 1901 census shows him living at the Rectory with his wife and their cook and housemaid. .

The 1911 census shows William and his wife, both aged 81, living in retirement at Pyrford near Woking, Surrey with their two servants. His wife Rosa died on 1 October 1914.

William Tuckwell junior died on 1 February 1919, and was buried with his wife at St Nicholas's Church in Pyrton (see his grave).

His daughter Gertrude Mary Tuckwell (1861–1951) was involved with the Women's Trade Union league, and was one of the first seven women appointed a Justice of the Peace. See her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Ann Abernethy Tuckwell (1832–1916)

In 1861 Ann (28) and her sisters Harriet, Margaret, and Ellen were still the wards of Miss Nutt and were living with her in a lodging house on Headington Hill.

In 1871 Ann (38) and her sister Harriet (37) were living at 32 Rectory Road (which was then called Pembroke Street) in east Oxford.

In 1881 Ann (48) was living with her married sister Margaret in Northallerton, Yorkshire,

In 1891 she was living with her brother Lewis, the Rector of Standlake in Oxfordshire.

In 1901 she was back living with her sister Margaret in Northallerton.

In 1911 she was the head of the household at 37 Aston Street, in east Oxford, and her brother Lewis was living with her.

Ann Abernethy Tuckwell died in Oxford at the age of 84 and was buried in the grave of her sister Harriet at Rose Hill Cemetery on 30 November 1916.

Harriet Frances Tuckwell (1834–1915)

In 1861 Harriet (27) and her sisters Ann, Harriet, and Ellen were still the wards of Miss Nutt and were living with her in a lodging house on Headington Hill.

In 1871 Harriet (37) and her sister Ann (38) were living at 32 Rectory Road (which was then called Pembroke Street) in east Oxford.

In 1881 she was paying a visit to Hastings in Sussex, and is hard to find in the 1891 census.

In 1901 she was paying a visit to a family in Bournemouth, and in 1911 she was boarding on her own at a house called Clovelly in Headington.

Harriet Frances Tuckwell died in Oxford at the age of 81 and was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery on 20 February 1915.

Henry Matthews Tuckwell (1834–1921)

Henry gained his MA from Lincoln College in 1856 and joined his father’s practice as a surgeon, both at 64 High Street and then at Cowley House. He sold Cowley House in 1862, and the 1881 census shows him living at 64 High Street with his wife Martha and nephew, plus a cook and three housemaids. In 1863 he published On effusions of blood in the neighbourhood of the uterus; or, The so-called periuterine hæmatocele.

On 3 October 1867 Henry Matthews Tuckwell married Martha Grace Maclean Bishop, the daughter of the late physician Charles Joseph Bishop of 1 Holywell Street. They do not appear to have had any children.

The 1881 census shows Henry and his wife living at 64 High Street, Oxford. They were still there in 1891 (when Henry had retired) and in 1901.

Henry Matthews Tuckwell died at 64 High Street at the age of 71 on 2 March 1906 and was buried at Holywell Cemetery four days later. His wife Martha Grace McLean Tuckwell died at 64 High Street at the age 82, and was buried with him on 14 November 1921.

Plaque in St Peter-in-the-East Church (now St Edmund Hall Library)

Margaret Tuckwell, Mrs Caffin (1836–1923)

In 1861 Margaret (25) and her sisters Ann, Harriet, and Ellen were still the wards of Miss Nutt and were living with her in a lodging house on Headington Hill.

On 29 March 1862 at St Margaret's Church, Durham, Margaret Tuckwell married Benjamin Charles Caffin, the Second Master of Durham School. At the time of the 1871 census se was living at the school boarding house with her husband and their children Margaret (3) and Ernest (1).

By the time of the 1881 census her husband was the Vicar of Northallerton in Yorkshire, and she was living in the vicarage there with her husband and two children and her sister Ann. They were still there (without Ann) in 1891.

Margaret was widowed in 1894. In 1901 she was living at South End, Northallerton with her unmarried daughter Margaret (33) and her sister Ann was back living with her, but in 1911 she was living there just with her daughter

Margaret Caffin née Tuckwell died at Northallerton in 1923 at the age of 87. .

Ellen Sarah Tuckwell, Mrs Barwis (1837–1885)

In 1861 Ellen (23) and her sisters Annie, Harriet, and Margaret, were still the wards of Miss Nutt and were living with her in a lodging house on Headington Hill.

On 7 January 1869 Ellen was living at Cowley (probably with her brother Henry at Cowley House) when she was married at St James's Church there to the widower William Cuthbert Barwis, a Priest who lived at Silkstone in Yorkshire. The 1881 census shows her living at the vicarage at Holyand Swaine, Yorkshire with her husband and stepdaughter. In 1891 her husband was the Curate of Northallerton, Yorkshire and they were living there.

She died in the Wharfdale district at the age of 4 in 1885.

David Gregorie/Gregory Tuckwell (1838–1868)

David was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1865. He never married.

David Gregory Tuckwell died at Knaphill, near Woking, Surrey at the age of 30 on 16 March 1868, with his death announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal, and was buried there. His effects came to under £200, and his younger brother Lewis was his executor.

Lewis Stacey Tuckwell (1839–1932)

Lewis was the author of the book Old Magdalen Days.

He was a chorister at Magdalen College School from 1847 to 1857 and gained his BA at Magdalen College in 1863.

From 1866 to 1877 he was Chaplain & Precentor of Magdalen College, and also served as Curate of St Andrew's Church in Headington from 1866 to 1876. The 1871 census shows him living at New College, and he described himself as Curate of Headington. He was instrumental in getting a chapel of ease erected in 1870 in New Headington and an infant school there in 1873, and in 1874 he set up a Church of England Temperance Society (CETS) in the parish. He was much loved, and when he left in 1876, 190 parishioners contributed to a fund to buy him a harmonium.

He was Rector of Standlake from 1876, and the 1881 census shows him living in the Rectory there. By 1891 his unmarried sister Annie had come to live with him, but he was on his own again in 1901.

In 1911 he was aged 71 and retired and living at 37 Aston Street in east Oxford with his older sister Anne Abernethy Tuckwell, who was the head of the household.

On 12 October 1916 at Cowley St John Church, Lewis Stacey Tuckwell married for the first time at the age of 77. His wife was the widow Sarah Howes Terry who lived at 280 Iffley Road and was the daughter of the late Matthew Wise Phipps, described as a gentleman. .

He died at the Iffley Road in Oxford at the age of 83 and was buried at Standlake on 8 July 1922.

Edward Tuckwell (1840–1917)

On 22 February 1881 at Immanuel Church, Streatham Common, Edward Tuckwell (40), described as a stockbroker married Ethel Bailey (25), the third daughter of Edward Bailey, Esq., a solicitor. Both were then living in Streatham, and Edward's brother William Tuckwell junior officiated at the ceremony. They can be seen in the 1881 census living at 1 St Julian's Road with two servants. Their house there is named as “Cowley” in the 1891 census, and they now had five children (Edward, Gerard, Nigel, Grace, and Myrtle) and five servants. He was still living there in 1901, but in 1911 his address was 116 Leigham Court Road, Streatham (a house again named “Cowley”) and he was still a stockbroker at the Royal Exchange.

Edward Tuckwell died at 116 Leigham Court Road at the age of 76 on 3 April 1917. His effects came to £13,104 1s. 5d., and his widow Ethel was his executrix.