Chirurgical Society, and he and Charles Aikin were the first secretaries of the society. The formation of the library, now the best collection of medical books in London, was chiefly due to his exertions. He went to live at Carrow Abbey, near Norwich, in 1818, and became physician in 1820 to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He retired from practice, being wealthy, in 1832, and then resided at Woodton Hall, near Norwich. He was thrown on to his head from a phaeton in April 1840, and became in consequence paralysed on the right side. On 28 Jan. 1842 this was followed by an apoplectic attack and paralysis of the left side, of which he died at Cavendish Hall, Norfolk, on 31 Jan. 1842. In 1806 he married the daughter of Samuel Tyssen of Narborough Hall, Norfolk, by whom he left issue. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1829 ‘Remarks on the Tendency to Calculous Diseases,’ one of the numerous works which owe their origin to the fine museum of stones extracted from the bladder and preserved in the Norwich Hospital. He published a further work on the same subject in 1830, and a pamphlet ‘On Arrangements connected with the Medical Relief of the Sick Poor’ in 1837. He read before the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society seven papers, of which the most valuable are two on a paralysis due to tumour of the brain (Transactions, i. 183), and on loss of feeling without accompanying loss of power of movement (ib. iii. 90).
[Works; Memoir by Dr. Robert Williams, 1842.]
YELVERTON, BARRY, first Viscount Avonmore (1736–1805), was the eldest son of Frank Yelverton of Blackwater, co. Cork, by Elizabeth, daughter of Jonas Barry. He was born in 1736, and received his early education at a school at Newmarket, near his birthplace. In 1753 he entered at Trinity College, Dublin, obtaining a sizarship and subsequently (1755) a scholarship. He graduated B.A. in 1757. Being in very poor circumstances, Yelverton maintained himself for some years by teaching, and acted as usher in the Hibernian Academy in North King Street, Dublin, under Andrew Buck, a position of ignominious dependence, of which in later days he was ungenerously reminded by his political opponents, who lampooned the future chief baron as ‘Buck's usher.’ In July 1761 his marriage with Mary, daughter of William Nugent of Clonlost, co. Westmeath, a lady of some fortune, enabled Yelverton to study for the Irish bar, to which he was called in 1764. Possessed of remarkable rhetorical ability and a highly cultivated mind, at a time when eloquence was a more important qualification for success than legal learning, Yelverton rapidly attained a high position in his profession. He was appointed a king's counsel in 1772 and a bencher of the King's Inns the same year.
In 1774 Yelverton was returned to the Irish parliament for the borough of Donegal, and in 1776 for Carrickfergus, which he represented until his elevation to the bench. He was a member of the earlier volunteer associations, and, associating himself with the popular party, he joined Grattan and his colleagues in their demand for legislative independence. In July 1782, during the government of the Duke of Portland, he was appointed to succeed John Scott (afterwards Lord Clonmell) [q. v.] as attorney-general, and in December 1783, on the death of Walter Hussey Burgh [q. v.], he ascended the bench as chief baron of the court of exchequer. In 1789 Yelverton took part with Grattan and the Irish whigs in supporting the claim of the Irish parliament to exercise an independent right of nomination in reference to the regency. In later years, however, he associated himself, like most if not all his colleagues on the Irish judicial bench, with the court party, and, abandoning his former political connections, he ultimately voted for the union. In 1795 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Avonmore, and in 1800 was created a viscount in the peerage of Ireland and a baron of the United Kingdom.
Although very few specimens of his eloquence remain, few men, even in that age of great speakers, enjoyed a higher reputation for eloquence than Yelverton. Sir Jonah Barrington [q. v.] says of him that although inferior in reasoning power to Flood, in epigrammatic brilliancy to Grattan, and in pathos to Curran, in powerful nervous language he excelled them all. Grattan in the English House of Commons paid the following remarkable and glowing tribute to his powers as a debater: ‘The penal code was detailed by the late Lord Avonmore. I heard him. His speech was the whole of the subject, and a concatenated and inspired argument not to be resisted. It was the march of an elephant. It was as the wave of the Atlantic, a column of water three thousand miles deep. He began with the catholic at his birth; he followed him to his grave. He showed that in every period he was harassed by the law. The law stood at his cradle, it stood at his bridal bed, and it stood at his coffin.’
