The following biographical notes introduce the personalities of those whose actions resulted, either directly or indirectly, in James Hall becoming involved in the trial and divorce of Queen Caroline. They also provide a background to the behaviour of the Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, as described by James Hall in his diaries.
SURGEON BARRY O'MEARA
As we will learn later Barry O'Meara is the key figure in this story.
O'Meara was an Irish Protestant born in 1786, who after medical training became an army surgeon. In 1807 he left the Army having acted as a second in an illegal duel. He then joined the Navy as an Assistant Surgeon, and after serving in a number of ships became the Surgeon of Bellerophon, the ship that took Napoleon from Rochefort to Plymouth after the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon took a liking to O'Meara, partly because he spoke fluent Italian, and asked him to accompany him to St Helena when his own French doctor refused to follow him into exile. With the approval of the Admiralty O'Meara accepted this offer on two conditions. First that he should retain his position as a Surgeon in the Royal Navy and secondly that he should be able to resign his post as Napoleon's doctor whenever he wished.
This arrangement had its difficulties. As a naval officer O'Meara had a loyalty to his country and to those responsible for making sure that Napoleon did not do another 'Elba' from St Helena, on the other hand as Napoleon's doctor he was to a certain extent governed by the rules of patient confidentiality. There would inevitably be occasions when these two responsibilities would be difficult to reconcile.
To begin with there were no major problems. On arrival at St Helena in October 1815 Admiral Cockburn, the Flag Officer in command of the squadron that had brought Napoleon from England, was responsible for his security and enforcing the rules that had been laid down by the Colonial Secretary, Lord Bathurst. These rules, particularly those governing his movements on the island and how he should be addressed, did cause friction between Napoleon and the Admiral, but the latter was a humane man and enforced them in a reasonably sensitive manner. In the early days Napoleon's health was good and O'Meara had little cause to use his professional skills. However Napoleon enjoyed his company and saw him daily, when the doctor would pass on to him all the island gossip.
There was however another side to O'Meara's activities. One of the reasons that he had accepted his present position, was that he saw it as an opportunity to obtain the necessary material to write a book about Napoleon. At the same time he was passing back to a friend in the Admiralty details of what was happening, knowing that his letters would probably be seen by Lord Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and thereby further his career. O'Meara was therefore something of an opportunist and his behaviour was not entirely honourable. However there is no evidence that his activities did Napoleon any serious harm.
SIR HUDSON LOWE
This relatively happy state of affairs ended in April 1816 when the new Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe arrived at St Helena. His predecessor, an East India Company appointee, had been a kind and pleasant man whom Napoleon liked, but he was not responsible for the conditions of Napoleon's captivity. Sir Hudson, who took over these responsibilities from the Admiral, managed to make Napoleon's life increasingly miserable for the next five years.
The sad truth was that Sir Hudson Lowe was quite unsuited for the post he had been given. In the view of his personal doctor he was mentally unstable and suffering from what today we would call 'an anxiety neurosis'. This condition made him pathologically suspicious, which in turn led him to be illogical, indecisive, untrustworthy, stubborn and quick to anger. The Duke of Wellington, who wisely had dismissed him from his post as Quartermaster General shortly before the Battle of Waterloo, was more concise. On being asked his opinion in 1818, he is reported to have said 'As for Lowe, he is a damned fool'.
As a series of new and often petty and ridiculous restrictions were imposed on Napoleon by the new Governor, relations between the two men rapidly deteriorated and on August 18th they had a meeting which ended in a blazing row after which they never met or spoke to each other again. For nearly a year O'Meara somehow managed to remain on reasonable terms with both his masters, mainly by not being totally honest with either of them. On one hand he passed information to the Governor about life at Longwood, Napoleon's residence, and on the other hand he passed on newspapers to Napoleon, a practice of which the Governor disapproved. It was this latter practice that led to the first serious disagreement between the Governor and O'Meara. In May 1817 the Governor said that this practice was to be stopped. O'Meara threatened to resign if an order to that effect was issued.
After this dispute O'Meara limited his reports to the Governor to information about Napoleon's health and when pressed for further details was uncooperative. Faced with this defiant attitude the Governor became determined to get rid of O'Meara, but at first was thwarted by Lord Melville's support of his naval surgeon.
Matters reached a crisis in the first part of 1818. In April the Governor's spies discovered that O'Meara had passed a silver snuff box from Napoleon to a departing English cleric as a token of his appreciation for burying one of his servants. For this offence O'Meara was restricted to the limits of Longwood. O'Meara ignored the restrictions imposed on him and handed in his resignation. Napoleon himself then decided to stir things up further and said that as his medical adviser had lost the confidence of the Governor, he was no longer able to avail himself of his services.
This put the Governor in a difficult position. His present appointment depended on Napoleon remaining alive. If Napoleon died he would have to return to England and there was little likelihood that he would receive another appointment with the salary and perks of his present one. There were difficulties in finding a replacement to O'Meara. The obvious replacement would have been a Doctor Baxter, deputy inspector of Hospitals and Sir Hudson's personal physician, but he, although competent and a sympathetic character, had already been rejected by Napoleon because of his close connection with the Governor. A replacement from either England or France would have taken at least a year to arrange and Napoleon's health was not good enough to allow that sort of delay.
While the Governor was mulling these problems over in his mind Gaspard Gourgaud, one the senior members of Napoleon's court had arrived in England, and for reasons connected with his own ambitions, had given Lord Bathurst a very inaccurate and dishonest version of O'Meara's activities and the state of Napoleon's health. For some reason Lord Bathurst, and probably also Lord Melville, accepted this version of events, and on 16th May a letter was sent by Lord Bathurst saying that he had no objection to O'Meara being sent home. This letter was received at St Helena on 23rd July and on the 2nd August O'Meara left the island on board HMS Griffon bound for England. As James' diaries tell us the Griffon called at Ascension Island where the two men had a further meeting. After O'Meara left St Helena the question of who was to replace him as Napoleon's medical adviser was left unresolved. When Lord Bathurst had given the Governor permission to send O'Meara home he had suggested that Dr Baxter should take his place, but as we know this sensible solution was not acceptable to Napoleon because of Baxter's close association with the Governor. The Governor then offered an army surgeon but, true to form, he did so in such a tactless manner that Napoleon also rejected his services.
SURGEON JOHN STOKOE
In the end the Royal Navy came to the rescue. The only doctor that Napoleon would see was Dr John Stokoe, the Surgeon of the Conqueror, flagship of Admiral Plampin, who had arrived at St Helena in June 1817. Stokoe, who had become a close friend of O'Meara, had met Napoleon in October 1817 when visiting Longwood. Napoleon took a liking to him, partly because, like O'Meara, he spoke excellent Italian.
Napoleon's choice was not popular with the Governor and the Admiral. They thought, incorrectly, that Stokoe had knowingly been used as a go-between for correspondence between O'Meara's agent, Holmes, and O'Meara. There also had been an incident shortly before O'Meara left when Napoleon became ill and O'Meara had asked for Stokoe to attend to give a second opinion. Stokoe refused unless a third doctor was present. This decision had developed into a serious dispute between the Governor and Stokoe.
In early January 1819 Napoleon became seriously ill. Stokoe was sent for, but because the request had to pass through the Governor, the Admiral and the Captain of Conqueror it took seven hours for him to arrive, by which time Napoleon had made a partial recovery. After this crisis attempts were made by Napoleon's staff to negotiate arrangements which would make it possible for Stokoe to attend on his patient more promptly, but these all failed due to the intransigence of both the Governor and the Admiral.
Later in the month Napoleon again became ill. Once again Stokoe found himself in the impossible position of attending to his patient and being harassed and abused by the Governor and the Admiral. They wanted his medical reports to discredit O'Meara and if they did not do that then they wished to be rid of him. By now Stokoe had had enough and he applied for leave of absence for reasons of health. He left St Helena for Portsmouth on 30th January. What he did not know was that on the same vessel was a report to the Admiralty recommending that he be court-martialled.
On arriving in England on April 4th he visited the Admiralty, where he was told it had been decided he should return to St Helena immediately. No reason was given and he suspected nothing. He left England on 19th April and arrived at St Helena, via Cape Town on the 21st August. He was arrested and brought before a court-martial on a number of frivolous charges, the gravest of which was that he had 'stated facts relative to the health of General Bonaparte which did not fall under his observation and which he had later admitted were dictated or suggested by members of his staff'. He was found guilty on all charges and his name ordered to be removed from the list of naval surgeons, however he was awarded a pension of '100 a year. On returning to England he spent the next two years unsuccessfully trying to clear his name. Between 1821 and 1824 he was employed by Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, members of whose family he escorted to and from the United States. He died in 1852 at York railway station.
The reader will not be surprised to hear that both O'Meara and Stokoe were not happy with the treatment that they had received from the Sir Hudson Lowe and Lords Bathurst and Melville in England. This treatment was no doubt responsible for the action that they took two years later.
ADMIRAL PLAMPIN
Admiral Plampin was a comparatively minor figure in our story, however his failure to protect his two naval surgeons from the disgraceful treatment they received from the Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, did contribute to what happened later.
When Admiral Plampin arrived at St Helena in the summer of 1817 he was accompanied by his mistress. By the nature of their profession all mistresses are likely to be slightly promiscuous, but this one was particularly so. It is said that not only did she bestow her favours on the Admiral, who according to Napoleon looked like 'one of those little, drunken Dutch schippers, he had seen sitting at a table with a bottle of gin in front of him' but also on his Flag Lieutenant and several of his Midshipmen. Fortunately for the Admiral most of the inhabitants on the island took a fairly relaxed view on moral questions and in fact one of Napoleon's favourite past times had been to discuss with O'Meara who was committing adultery with whom.
There was however one exception, the Reverend Richard Boys, Chaplain of the Honourable East India Company in St Helena. He felt strongly on moral issues and made the Admiral's unorthodox domestic situation the subject of one his sermons. In the company of the 'great and the good' of St Helenian society the Admiral had to listen to the Reverend Boys telling him to 'flee from the wrath to come by putting away the accursed woman'. Not unnaturally the Admiral did not feel that this advice enhanced his authority as 'senior naval officer present' and he turned to the Governor for help. Somehow the Governor managed to silence the Reverend Boys and from then on the Admiral was in no position to disagree with him.