Deodatus Stone (1777–1852)
Deodatus Stone was born at Cumnor in Berkshire in about 1777. He appears to have been the son of Deodatus (aka Theodatus) Stone of North Hinksey and Margaret Godfrey of Cumnor.
On 24 September 1804 at St Peter & St Paul Church in Milton-by-Gravesend, Kent, Deodatus Stone married Anness Read. They settled in St Clement’s, Oxford, and had the following children:
- Ann Rachel Stone (baptised at St Clement’s Church on 14 August 1805)
- Emma Stone (baptised at St Clement’s Church on 24 September 1806)
- Deodatus Stone junior (baptised at St Clement’s Church on 4 January 1808)
- Charles Stone (baptised St Clement’s Church on30 December 1808,
died aged seven weeks and buried there on 24 February 1808) - Robert Stone (baptised at St Clement’s Church on 12 November 1811)
- Henrietta Stone (baptised St Clement’s Church 18 December 1812, died aged “about 3 months”, buried there 7 March 1813)
Deodatus’s first wife Anness Stone died “aged about 33” and was buried at St Clement’s Church on 20 March 1813, just 13 days after the burial of her baby daughter Henrietta. She was described in the register as the wife of Deodatus, “Apothecary of Boulter’s Almshouse”.
Stone continued to work in St Clement’s. As he was neither a matriculated tradesman of the University nor a freeman of the city, he would not at this period have been allowed to work within the city itself (and St Clement’s did not become part of Oxford until 1835).
On 5 June 1820 at St Giles's Church, Oxford, Deodatus Stone married his second wife, Maria Moore. Maria had been baptised in 1781 and so was nearly 40 at the time of the marriage, and they had just one daughter:
- Elizabeth Moore Stone (privately baptised on 19 August 1821 and admitted to St Clement’s Church on 22 September 1831).
Again, Stone was described in the register as an apothecary rather than a surgeon.
By 1830 Stone was listed in Pigot’s Directory as a Surgeon in St Clement’s, and Robson’s Directory the following year specifies that his premises were in St Clement’s High Street.
On 19 July 1832 his daughter Ann Rachel Stone married Joseph Charles Pring, the Chaplain of New College who in 1835 would also become Vicar of Headington.
His second wife Maria Stone appears to have died, as at the time of the 1841 census he was living in St Clement’s with his daughters Emma and Elizabeth Stone and described as a surgeon.
On 30 August 1842 at St Clement's Church his second daughter Emma Stone married the pawnbroker Joseph Turner of Lambeth in Surrey.
In the 1851 census, when he was 74, Stone was described as a General Practitioner and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the same two daughters were still living with him: Emma Turner (42), who was already widowed, and Elizabeth Stone (28).
Stone died on 12 July 1852 at the age of 75 and was buried at St Clement’s Church four days later. His obituary in the Medical Times Gazette read:
On the 12th instant, aged 75, Deodatus Stone, Esq., surgeon, of Oxford, and Master of Boulter's alms-houses. Mr. Stone enjoyed a very extensive practice in Oxford and its vicinity for nearly fifty years. His kindness of heart and humane disposition endeared him to all who availed themselves of his professional services, or who had the happiness of his friendship, and have rendered his decease a public loss.
The “Will of Deodatus Stone, Surgeon of Oxford” (date of probate 25 August 1852) was deposited at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury: ref PROB 11/2158.