Veterinary surgeon with stuffed horse

Born in 1847 at Bury in Lancashire, John Porritt Rothwell was the son of Job Rothwell, a 'master draper employing 2 men and 2 boys' (1861 census). By 1871 he was a 23-year-old 'Veterinary Surgeon' living at 136 Tweedale Street in Rochdale. He had married his wife, Eliza Hannah Porritt, the previous year in Bury. The household included an apprentice, Edward Waugh, and one domestic servant. Eliza died in 1873 and the following year John married his second wife Betsy Howarth in Bury. The couple appear on the 1881 census living at 67 Clifton Street, Lytham (Lancashire), with their two daughters, Mary and Violet, and their son, William Baker Rothwell, aged 9. Another son, named John Porritt Rothwell after his father, had died in 1876, aged 1.

By 1891 the family had moved to 118 Albert Road, Layton (today a suburb of Blackpool). John was still working as a 'Veterinary Surgeon' but he had retired by the time the census was taken in 1901 and moved with Betsy to Holdenhurst, a village near Bournemouth in Dorset.


Photographer and location unidentified.