Family Background
John Henry Frederick Spencer was born in 1813 to a family with a long history in medicine. His maternal grandfather, Joseph Haskins, was a doctor, and his father, John Spencer, was a surgeon from London. His uncle, Henry Vicesimus Haskins, died while working as an army surgeon in Sierra Leone.
In 1839 Doctor Spencer married Catherine Rose Lamothe. She was the granddaughter of Dominique Jean Lamothe, the French naval surgeon whose seafaring adventures brought him to the island in 1760. Her father, Frederick Lamothe, was a doctor in Ramsey and her brother, Frederick John Dominique, was an advocate, MHK and Captain of the Parish of Bride.
Family Life
After their marriage the couple moved to Athol Street in Douglas with her mother, who died shortly after their arrival. They went on to have four children but, tragically, only one would live to adulthood. Two girls, Rosina Mary Catherine and Frances Margaret, died in infancy, and the oldest boy, Henry Haskins, died in 1856 at the age of fifteen. The youngest boy, William Carpenter, was born in 1849, although it appears that his twin brother did not survive the birth.
Infant mortality in the UK in 1850 was 273 per 1,000, which meant that about one in four children was unlikely to survive until their fifth birthday. By Victorian standards the Spencers were not unusual but they were unlucky, and a poem written “for Mrs Spencer” by “Lily” in 1849 shows how deeply the family felt their loss.
In 1841 Catherine Rose’s sister, Ann Susanna and brother-in-law Pilcher Ralfe died suddenly in Ramsey, leaving four young children. From a report of a court case between two of the Lamothe brothers in 1843, it appears that the Spencers adopted the two youngest Ralfe boys. Frederick Whitfield and John Henry Lamothe were aged two and three at the time. John Henry later emigrated to New Zealand and gave the name Spencer to two of his sons, presumably after the family that had taken him in.
A plaque on the Spencer family grave in Maughold also memorialises Ellen McDonald, “for fifty years a faithful servant of Dr. Spencer and his family“, who died in 1889.
