Born Lamington, 2 May 1780; died Madras, 24 November 1819

When discussing the collectors of the ‘Wallich’ Herbarium, William Somervell Mitchell was not included as his collections were not sent directly to Wallich, but were included under ‘Herb. Madras’, a collection assembled by the Tranquebar Missionaries, especially Johann Gottfried Klein. It is therefore necessary to add Mitchell to the category of Madras Surgeons who contributed to the great Herbarium of the Honourable East India Company.

Mitchell was the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Mitchell, minister of Lamington in Lanarkshire. According to the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, the biographical dictionary of Church of Scotland ministers, he is said to have been the one characterised by Robert Burns as ‘as cauld a minister’s ever speak’. Baptised merely ‘Somervell’ on 4 May 1780, he signed his name as ‘William Somervell Mitchell’ of Edinburgh, when registering for Daniel Rutherford’s botany class in 1800, the year he graduated MD from the University of Edinburgh with a thesis on tuberculosis entitled ‘De Phthisi Pulmonali’. In 1801 Mitchell went as an East India Company Assistant Surgeon to Madras and was promoted Surgeon in 1814.

Much fascinating information is to be found about Mitchell in Savithri Preetha Nair’s biography of Raja of Tanjore (now Thanjavur), Serfoji II, who ruled from 1798 until his death in 1832. Although a devout Hindu Serfoji came under the influence of the Tanjore and Tranquebar missionaries, notably Christian Frederick Schwartz, who tutored him. James Anderson, botanist and senior medic in Madras interested him in medicine, and particularly in vaccination.

In 1805 Mitchell was appointed Surgeon to the British Residency attached to Serfoji’s court on an annual salary of £729. The Resident was then William Blackburne who was impressed by Mitchell’s “general knowledge, His abilities, His various acquisitions in Language and Science, and the Integrity of his character [which] make him an invaluable Member of the liberal Society of this place”. Serfoji had deep and broad interests in western arts and sciences, and used Mitchell as an ‘agent’ to procure “medical and other scientific books, surgical and philosophical instruments, objects of natural history, art and music” for his collections. For a salary of 100 Pagodas, Serfoji asked Mitchell to teach him anatomy and “the principles of the European System of Medicine”. The lessons began but Mitchell was then called away on military service on the Malabar Coast for nineteen months. After his return to Tanjore Serfoji continued the anatomy lessons for only a short time, but in 1808 Mitchell embarked on a programme of vaccination that he extended to the nearby Tondamain kingdom at Puducottah.

It must have been during his 14 years at Tanjore that Mitchell became acquainted with the missionaries at nearby Tranquebar: Johahnn Gottfried Klein and Christopher Samuel John of the Halle Mission and Benjamin Heyne of the Moravian Mission. The link with Klein must have been particularly close as Mitchell is referred to as his dearest friend (‘amicissime’).  Heyne, who had been the botanist and mineralogist on the Colin Mackenzie survey of Mysore, and Madras Naturalist, died in 1819 and on 2 October of that year Mitchell was appointed as his successor. However, on 24 November, after only about seven weeks in post, Mitchell died. His executor Blackburne sent his “collections of metal images of the Buddha, a model of a Kandian tomb, palm leaf manuscripts, medicines and several other objects from South India and Ceylon” to the Madras Literary Society, which suggests that Mitchell may also have visited Ceylon.

When the Naturalist’s post was abolished in 1828 Robert Wight had to pack up its collections, which were sent to the EIC in London and later incorporated into the ‘Wallich’ Herbarium. These included what Wight described as ‘a Collection of plants purchased by the late Dr Shuter [Wight’s predecessor] from the Estate of Dr Klein a Danish Missionary’, which explains why the Mitchell specimens are labelled in Klein’s hand. Wallich, who denoted it ‘Hebr. Madras’, may well have been correct in stating that it also contained specimens collected by Heyne and Johann Peter Rottler.

In the Wallich Catalogue nine collections are credited to Mitchell (spelt with one ‘l’), five of them collected at Courtallum, later to become one of Wight’s most productive collecting localities. Interestingly two of the species were intended to have been named for Mitchell, but both were nomina nuda. ‘Tephrosia mitchellii’ (5641A) was named by Robert Graham, RBGE Regius Keeper who curated, but never published, the legumes of the Wallich Herbarium (it is now regarded as a synonym of the widespread T. purpurea); and ‘Loranthus mitchellii’ (6865) named by Wallich (now regarded as a synonym of Olax imbricata).

The other species are now identified as follows: Nephrolepis exaltata (1031.H); Impatiens scapiflora (4758.B); Boerhavia diffusa (6770.D); Capparis diversifolia (6986.[A]); Aerides crispa (7319); Taprobanea spathulata (7323.A) and Psychotria sp. (8390.B).

Reference

Nair, S.P. (2012). Raja Serfoji II: Science, Medicine and Enlightenment in Tanjore. New Delhi: Routledge.

By Henry Noltie