Ferry is served by the Hudson River division of the New York Central railway. There are many fine country places, two private schools—the Mackenzie school for boys and the Misses Masters’ school for girls—and the children’s village (with about thirty cottages) of the New York juvenile asylum. The name of the village was derived from a Swede, Jeremiah Dobbs, whose family probably moved hither from Delaware, and who at the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century had a skiff ferry, which was kept up by his family for a century afterwards. Because Dobbs Ferry had been a part of Philipse Manor all lands in it were declared forfeit at the time of the War of American Independence (see Yonkers), and new titles were derived from the commissioners of forfeitures. The position of the village opposite the northernmost end of the Palisades gave it importance during the war. The region was repeatedly raided by camp followers of each army; earthworks and a fort, commanding the Hudson ferry and the ferry to Paramus, New Jersey, were built; the British army made Dobbs Ferry a rendezvous, after the battle of White Plains, in November 1776, and the continental division under General Benjamin Lincoln was here at the end of January 1777. The American army under Washington encamped near Dobbs Ferry on the 4th of July 1781, and started thence for Yorktown in the following month. In the Van Brugh Livingston house on the 6th of May 1783, Washington and Governor George Clinton met General Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, to negotiate for the evacuation by the British troops of the posts they still held in the United States. In 1873 the village was incorporated as Greenburgh, from the township of the same name which in 1788 had been set apart from the manor of Phillipsburgh; but the name Dobbs Ferry was soon resumed.
DOBELL, SYDNEY THOMPSON (1824–1874), English poet and critic, was born on the 5th of April 1824 at Cranbrook, Kent. His father was a wine merchant, his mother a daughter of Samuel Thompson (1766–1837), a London political reformer. The family moved to Cheltenham when Dobell was twelve years old. He was educated privately, and never attended either school or university. He refers to this in some lines on Cheltenham College in imitation of Chaucer, written in his eighteenth year. After a five years’ engagement he married, in 1844, Emily Fordham, a lady of good family. An acquaintance with Mr (subsequently Sir James) Stansfeld and with the Birmingham preacher-politician, George Dawson (1821–1876), which afterwards led to the foundation of the Society of the Friends of Italy, fed the young enthusiast’s ardour for the liberalism of the day. Meanwhile, Dobell wrote a number of minor poems, instinct with a passionate desire for political reform. The Roman appeared in 1850, under the nom de plume of “Sydney Yendys.” Next year he travelled through Switzerland with his wife; and after his return he formed friendships with Robert Browning, Philip Bailey, George MacDonald, Emanuel Deutsch, Lord Houghton, Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Mazzini, Tennyson and Carlyle. His second long poem, Balder, appeared in 1854. The three following years were spent in Scotland. Perhaps his closest friend at this time was Alexander Smith, in company with whom he published, in 1855, a number of sonnets on the Crimean War, which were followed by a volume on England in Time of War. Although by no means a rich man he was always ready to help needy men of letters, and it was through his exertions that David Gray’s poems were published. In 1869 a horse, which he was riding, fell and rolled over with him. His health, which had for several years necessitated his wintering abroad, was seriously affected by this accident, and he was from this time more or less of an invalid, until his death on the 22nd of August 1874.
As a poet Dobell belongs to the “spasmodic school,” as it was named by Professor Aytoun, who parodied its style in Firmilian. The epithet, however, was first applied by Carlyle to Byron. The school includes George Gilfillan, Philip James Bailey, John Stanyan Bigg (1826–1865), Dobell, Alexander Smith, and, according to some critics, Gerald Massey. It was characterized by an under-current of discontent with the mystery of existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle, sceptical unrest, and an uneasy straining after the unattainable. It thus faithfully reflected a certain phase of 19th century thought. The productions of the school are marked by an excess of metaphor and a general extravagance of language. On the other hand, they exhibit freshness and originality often lacking in more conventional writings. Dobell’s poem, The Roman, dedicated to the interests of political liberty in Italy, is marked by pathos, energy and passionate love of freedom, but it is overlaid with monologue, which is carried to a dreary excess in Balder, relieved though the latter is by fine descriptive passages, and by some touching songs. Dobell’s suggestive, but too ornate prose writings were collected and edited with an introductory note by Professor J. Nichol (Thoughts on Art, Philosophy and Religion) in 1876. In his religious views Dobell was a Christian of the Broad Church type; and socially he was one of the most amiable and true-hearted of men. His early interest in the cause of oppressed nationalities, shown in his friendship with Kossuth, Emanuel Deutsch and others, never lessened, although his views of home politics underwent some change from the radical opinions of his youth. In Gloucestershire Dobell was well known as an advocate of social reform, and he was a pioneer in the application of the co-operative system to private enterprise.
The standard edition of his poems (1875) by Professor Nichol includes a memoir.
DÖBELN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, on the (Freiberg) Mulde, two arms of which embrace the town as an island, 35 m. S.E. from Leipzig by rail, and at the junction of lines to Dresden, Chemnitz, Riesa and Oschatz. Pop. (1905) including the garrison, 18,907. It has two Evangelical churches, of which the Nikolai-kirche, dating in its present form from 1485, is a handsome edifice; a medieval town hall, a former Benedictine nunnery and a monument to Luther. There are an agricultural and a commercial school. The industries include wool-spinning, iron-founding, carriage, agricultural implement, and metal-printing and stamping works.
DOBERAN, or Dobberan, a town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, about 2 m. from the shores of the Baltic and 7 W. of Rostock by rail. Pop. 5000. Besides the ruins of a Cistercian abbey founded by Pribislaus, prince of Mecklenburg, in 1173, and secularized in 1552, it possesses an Evangelical Gothic church of the 14th century, one of the finest in north Germany, a grand-ducal palace, a theatre, an exchange and a concert hall. Owing to its delightful situation amid beech forests and to its chalybeate waters, Doberan has become a favourite summer resort. Numerous villa residences have been erected and promenades and groves laid out. In 1793 Duke Frederick Francis caused the first seaside watering-place in Germany to be established on the neighbouring coast, 4 m. distant, at the spot where the Heiligen-Damm, a great bank of rocks about 1000 ft. broad and 15 ft. high, stretches out into the sea and forms an excellent bathing ground. Though no longer so popular as in the early part of the 19th century, it is still frequented, and is connected with Doberan by a tramway.
DÖBEREINER, JOHANN WOLFGANG (1780–1849), German chemist, was born near Hof in Bavaria on the 15th of December 1780. After studying pharmacy at Münchberg, he started a chemical manufactory in 1803, and in 1810 was appointed professor of chemistry, pharmacy and technology at Jena, where he died on the 24th of March 1849. The Royal Society’s Catalogue enumerates 171 papers by him on various chemical topics, but his name is best known for his experiments on platinum in a minute state of division and on the oxidation products of alcohol. In 1822 he showed that when a mass of platinum black, supplied with alcohol by a wick is enclosed in a jar to which the air has limited access, acetic acid and water are produced; this experiment formed the basis of the Schützenbach Quick Vinegar Process. A year later he noticed that spongy platinum in presence of oxygen can bring about the ignition of hydrogen, and utilized this fact to construct his “hydrogen lamp,” the prototype of numerous devices for the self-ignition of coal-gas burners. He studied the formation of aldehyde from
