Henry Stephens (doctor)

At medical school in London he was a friend of, and shared rooms with, poet John Keats, later wrote treatises on hernia and cholera, and conducted experiments to improve writing fluids and wood stains.

In 1832 after years of experimentation he created an indelible blue-black writing fluid, patented it in 1837 and later formed the Stephens' Ink company which grew into a worldwide brand with a famous inkblot image.

Joseph Stephens became the innkeeper at The Bull, the principal inn and busy staging-post in Redbourn High Street on a main stagecoach route between London and the north.

[2] In 1811 Stephens was apprenticed to a local doctor in Markyate three miles north of Redbourn and in 1815 enrolled as a pupil in the united teaching school of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in London.

[1] He shared lodgings at 28 St Thomas Street, Southwark, with George Wilson Mackereth, whose daughter Stephens' son, Henry Charles, later married, and with John Keats, who was to become famous as a poet, and who died in Rome in 1821.

It is on record that in 1816 Stephens helped Keats compose the line from Endymion book 1, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever ..."[1][2] On 14 March 2002, as part of the 'Re-weaving Rainbows' event of National Science Week 2002, Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion unveiled a blue plaque on the front wall of 28 St Thomas Street to commemorate the sharing of lodgings there by Keats and Stephens while they were medical students at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital in 1815–16.

He was a friend of the distinguished surgeon Sir Astley Cooper, physician to King William IV, who encouraged Stephens to return to London where his medical abilities could be put to greater use.

In Bath Stephens paid a visit to the famous stone quarries and Pump Room, and finally returned to London by coach via Marlborough, the Savernake Forest, Henley and Windsor.

He also became an expert on cholera which was always a problem in the city until John Snow (1813–1858), Vice-President and later President of the Society, brought the outbreaks to an end by his celebrated removal of the handle from the pump of the sewage-contaminated well in Broad Street, Soho, in 1854.

From around 1830 Stephens had been experimenting with chemicals and ink-making in the basement cellar at 54 Stamford Street, perhaps as a sort of hobby but more likely due to dissatisfaction with the poor quality of the writing materials available at that time.

As the population slowly became more literate, writing materials were much in demand, and Stephens took over a nearby stable and yard, where he kept his doctor's horse and carriage, for his factory, employing a foreman and men to handle the bottling.

In 1846 the doctor and his family, tired of the noise and squalor of the city, moved six miles north to the leafy village of Finchley, where they acquired a spacious home, Grove House, with outhouses and several fields adjoining Ballards Lane.

Stephens' indelible "blue-black writing fluid" and other inks received favourable press reviews and the company's wood stains for oak, mahogany and walnut were used on the doors and panels of the Exhibition buildings.

In addition to Michael Faraday, among his personal friends were John Glover, Queen Victoria's librarian; Thomas Sopwith, geologist and mining engineer; and Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, eminent doctor and physiologist.