SNELLING, THOMAS (1712–1773), numismatist, born in 1712, carried on business as a coin-dealer and bookseller at No. 163 Fleet Street, next the Horn Tavern (now Anderton's Hotel). His name often occurs as a purchaser at London coin-sales about 1766, and among his numismatic customers was William Hunter the anatomist. Snelling wrote and published many treatises on British coins, meritorious productions for their time. The plates of his ‘View of the Silver Coin … of England’ are rather coarsely executed, but Hawkins (Silver Coins) praises them for their fidelity. On the title-pages and plates of his books Snelling was wont to insert the advertisement: ‘Who buys and sells all sorts of coins and medals.’ He died on 2 May 1773, and his son, Thomas Snelling, carried on business as a printseller at 163 Fleet Street, and published posthumously two of his father's works. Snelling's coins, medals, and antiques were sold by auction at Langford's, Covent Garden, 21–24 Jan. 1774 (Priced Sale Catalogue in Medal Room, Brit. Mus.). The coins were principally Greek and Roman, but none of the lots fetched high prices.
There are three portrait medals of Snelling in the British Museum, by G. Rawle, L. Pingo, and Kirk (Durand, Médailles et Jetons de Numismates, p. 190). A portrait of him was drawn and engraved by John Thane, 1770, and William Tassie made a medallion of him (Gray, Tassie, p. 147). There is also a medallion in the Tassie series (ib.) of his daughter, Miss Snelling.
Snelling's works are as follows:
- ‘Seventy-two Plates of Gold and Silver Coin, mostly English,’ 1757, 4to. Henfrey (Num. Chron. 1874, pp. 159 f.) has shown that these were probably printed from copperplates, engraved for Sir James Harrington and the committee of the mint in 1652.
- ‘A View of the Silver Coin … of England,’ 1762.
- . ‘A View of the Gold Coin … of England,’ 1763.
- ‘A View of the Copper Coin … of England,’ 1766 (includes the tradesmen's tokens).
- ‘The Doctrine of Gold and Silver Computations,’ 1766.
- ‘A Supplement to Mr. Simon's Essay on Irish Coins,’ 1767.
- ‘Miscellaneous Views of the Coins struck by English Princes in France,’ &c., 1769 (includes an account of counterfeit sterlings, and of English colonial and pattern coins).
- ‘A View of the Origin … of Jettons or Counters,’ 1769.
- ‘A View of the Silver Coin of … Scotland,’ 1774.
- ‘Thirty-three Plates of English Medals,’ 1776.
[Snelling's Works.]
SNETZLER, JOHN or JOHANN (1710?–1774?), organ-builder, was born about 1710 at Passau in Germany, where some of his work as organ-builder is still standing. He settled in England when the trade was in the hands of Byfield, Jordan, and Bridges, separate firms acting in practical partnership (Burney, iii. 436–41). Snetzler's organ built in 1754 for the church of Lynn Regis, Norfolk, gained him great repute (specification in Grove's Dictionary, ii. 597). His organs for Halifax (1766) and St. Martin's, Leicester (1774), were excellently built, while that supplied to Sir John Danvers at Swithland was described by Gardiner, thirty years afterwards, as a specimen of Snetzler's great talents. Saturated with damp and covered with dust, it was still in tune and playable condition (Music and Friends, i. 166).
Having saved sufficient money, he returned to his native country; but, after being ‘so long accustomed to London porter and English fare,’ he found German surroundings uncongenial, and returned to London. Letters of naturalisation were granted him on 12 April 1770 (Home Office Papers, p. 161). He died after 1773, in which year he acted as executor to his friend Burkat Shudi the elder (Grove, iii. 489).
[Miller's Hist. of Doncaster, p. 162; Gent. Mag. 1813, i. 356; authorities cited.]
SNOW, JOHN (1813–1858), anæsthetist, the eldest son of a farmer, was born at York on 15 March 1813. He was educated at a private school in his native city until the age of fourteen, when he was apprenticed to William Hardcastle, a surgeon living at Newcastle-on-Tyne. During his apprenticeship he became a vegetarian and total abstainer. After serving for a short time as a colliery surgeon and unqualified assistant, during the cholera epidemic of 1831–2, he became in October 1836 a student at the Hunterian school of medicine in Great Windmill Street, London. He began to attend the medical practice at the Westminster Hospital in the following October, and in October 1838 he became a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, having been admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 2 May 1838. He graduated M.D. of the university of London on 20 Dec. 1844, and in 1850 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians.
He attended with great regularity the
