"Without comment"

After a long and tedious meeting in London I made a quick visit to Kensal Green cemetry with the intention of finding the memorial to the Victorian illustrator George Cruickshank (which I did). I also came across the memorial to John Saint John Long. The inscription reads:

"It is the fate of most men to have many enemies and few friends. This monumental pile is not intended to mark the career, but to shew how much its inhabitant was respected by those who knew his worth and the benefits derived from his remedial discovery. He is now at rest and far beyond the praises, or censures of this world. Stranger as you respect the receptacle for the dead (as one of the many that will rest here.) read the name of JOHN SAINT JOHN LONG without comment."

Long was a controversial figure. He had no medical or surgical education but performed surgical procedures of his own devising and dispensed his own concoctions from his house in Harley Street. In August 1830 he was convicted of manslaughter over the death of 16 year old Miss Cashin. A further case followed, in November 1830, when a coroner's inquiry into the death of Mrs Colin Campbell Lloyd found him guilty of manslaughter on the grounds off 'gross ignorance' and sent him for trial at the Old Bailey. The jury, however, returned a verdict of not guilty. Long died in 1834 and the 'monumental pile' was erected by some of his former "patients".