The soldier's friend—Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, Inspector of Health for Land Forces

DuE TO THE high incidence of disease in British army regiments that were transported in merchant vessels during the French Revolution, the War Office in 1794 established sanitary regulations for troopships. At Plymouth and Portsmouth, the major ports of embarkation in England for military expeditions, Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, M.D., Inspector of Health for Land Transport, enforced this hygienic code. Fitzpatrick improved the practice of military medicine, he supervised the cleansing of ships, and he ameliorated living conditions for soldiers convoyed on long, gruelling voyages to theatres of war. Critical of army colonels and regimental surgeons who were indifferent to the plight of their men, caustic to complacent officials who impeded his sanitary crusade, and contemptuous of venal shipmasters who crammed their decks with cargoes of helpless troops, Fitzpatrick had a stormy career as a public health officer. Few clues exist about Fitzpatrick's Irish Catholic background, his personal life, or even about his education and training. Even the date of his birth is unknown. He was a doctor when knighted on 20 July 1782 by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; inscriptions on two portraits of Sir Jeremiah (or Jerome) cite his degree; and in Public Record Office documents, Fitzpatrick is mentioned as an M.D. Yet, his name is not among the lists of university graduates (Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Leyden),' and the Army Medical Board, during a controversy about his professional qualifications, stated to Henry Dundas, Secretary of War, that Fitzpatrick had not "been bred or accustomed to practice, either Physic, or Surgery in Hospitals of any kind; . . .X9.2 Although Fitzpatrick's early career remains obscure, he won a reputation as a prison reformer. In 1782, he was Deputy Inspector of Dublin jails, and in 1788, he was appointed Inspector of Prisons in Ireland. An ardent admirer of John Howard (1726-1790), the foremost penologist of the era, Fitzpatrick published in 1784 An essay on gaol-fevers, which received little attention compared to Howard's The state