John Reid

John Reid (1773-1822) was baptized at the Great Meeting, Leicester, on 9 February 1773, and later studied at Daventry Academy (1788-89) and at New College, Hackney (1789-94) in preparation for a career as a Dissenting minister; he chose medicine instead, completing his degree at Edinburgh in September 1798. He then settled in London and during much of 1799, his sister Mary Reid and her mother lived with John Reid in London for a time. Crabb Robinson wrote in his 1799 Reminiscences that it was “my friend Reid” (1: f. 111) who wrote an epigram about George Dyer’s poems “that I fear was thought just—” (1: f.109). John Reid appears in the correspondence of Dr. Richard Pulteney (1730–1801), an apothecary and botanist, originally from Leicester who settled at Blandford, Dorset, in 1765. Reid received a substantial legacy after the death of Pultney in 1801.