His last work was an expurgation of Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published posthumously in 1826 under the supervision of his nephew and biographer, Thomas Bowdler the Younger.

From his name derives the eponym verb bowdlerise or bowdlerize, meaning to expurgate or to censor something through the omission of elements deemed unsuited to children in literature and films and on television.

[4][5] Bowdler studied medicine at the universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, where he received his degree in 1776, graduating with a thesis on intermittent fevers.

[6] He then spent four years travelling in continental Europe, visiting the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, Italy, Sicily and Portugal.

[9] From 1811 until his death in 1825, Bowdler lived at Rhyddings House, overlooking Swansea Bay, from where he travelled extensively in Britain and Europe.

In 1815, he published Observations on Emigration to France, With an Account of Health, Economy, and the Education of Children, a cautionary work propounding his view that English invalids should avoid French spas and go instead to Malta.

[11] In his last years, Bowdler prepared an expurgated version of the works of the historian Edward Gibbon, which was published posthumously in 1826.

Later in life, Bowdler realised his father had been omitting or altering passages he felt unsuitable for the ears of his wife and children.

Bowdler felt it was worthwhile to publish an edition which might be used in a family whose father was not such a "circumspect and judicious reader" as to accomplish an expurgation himself.

According to the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, "More nauseous and more foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of Bowdler.

Bowdler lent his name to the English verb bowdlerise, which means "to remove words or sections from a book or other work that are considered unsuitable or offensive".