William Boys (surgeon) - Life

Life

Boys was born at Deal on 7 Sept. 1735. He was of an old Kent family (Hasted, History of Kent, iii. 109), being the eldest son of Commodore William Boys, R.N., lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital (c.1700–1774), by his wife, Elizabeth Pearson of Deal (Gent. Mag. lxxiii. pt. i. 421-3). About 1755 he was a surgeon at Sandwich, Kent, where he was noted for his untiring explorations of Richborough Castle, for skill in deciphering ancient manuscripts and inscriptions, for his zeal in collecting antiquities connected with Sandwich, and for his studies in astronomy, natural history, and mathematics. In 1759 he married Elizabeth Wise, a daughter of Henry Wise, one of the Sandwich jurats (ibid.), and by her he had two children. In 1761 he was elected jurat, acting with his wife's father. In the same year, 1761, she died, and in the next year, 1762, he married Jane Fuller, coheiress of her uncle, one John Paramor of Statenborough (ibid.) In 1767 Boys was mayor of Sandwich. In 1774 his father died at Greenwich (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. ix. 24 n.)

In 1782 he again served as mayor. In 1783 his second wife died, having borne him eight or nine children (ib., and Hasted, Hist. of Kent, iv. 222 n.) In 1796 he gave up his Sandwich practice and went to reside at Walmer, but returned to Sandwich at the end of three years, in 1799. His health had now declined. He had apoplectic attacks in 1799, and died of apoplexy on 15 March 1803, aged 68.

Boys was buried in St. Clement's Church, Sandwich, where there is a Latin epitaph to his memory, a suggestion for a monument with some doggerel verses, from a correspondent to the Gentleman's Magazine (lxxiii. pt. ii. 612), having fallen through. He was a member of the Linnean Society, and a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine (Index, vol. iii. preface, p. lxxiv). A tern found by him at Sandwich was named Sterna boysii, after him, by John Latham in his Index Ornithologicus.