Ballarat
Californian Gold Rush
Cape Horn
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Category=DN
Category=DNB
Category=DNBH
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eq_biography-true-stories
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Fremont
Jim Savage
Mariposa War
Native Americans
Ramage Press
San Francisco
Stockton Hospital
Stockton Times
Victorian Gold Rush
Product details
- ISBN 9781917458474
- Weight: 440g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 23 Oct 2025
- Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Dr Henry Radcliffe (1819 – 1903) was a young Liverpool doctor, who joined the Californian gold rush in 1849, sailing to San Francisco via Cape Horn. He settled in Stockton where, when not prospecting for gold in the upper reaches of the San Joaquin River, he founded the first hospital in Stockton and became the proprietor and first editor of the Stockton Times, the first newspaper in Stockton. He was also one of the first trustees of the Stockton Methodist Church, the earliest (by a day) church in Stockton.
The Doctor Digger is based on the letters of Dr Radcliffe, edited, with linking text, by his great, great, great nephew, John Radcliffe. Henry’s letters describe expeditions to remote parts of the Southern Goldfields, encounters with indigenous tribes and tribulations with the Stockton Times, as well as his longings for home. The book also illustrates features of life in California, the Indian genocide, independence from Mexico and Statehood and the Mariposa War.
When gold was discovered in Australia in 1851 Dr Radcliffe sailed for Sydney and made his way to the Victorian goldfields, finally settling in Ballarat. Later he became Honorary Physician at the Ballarat Base Hospital as well as maintaining a lucrative private practice. He died in 1903 ‘a very old , but very alert man’ and was buried next to the Eureka Soldiers Memorial in Ballarat Old Cemetery.
John Radcliffe worked as a solicitor in the City of London for the whole of his professional life. In retirement he turned to biography and in 2016 co-wrote a well received biography of George Lance, the Victorian still-life artist. When a distant cousin gave him the original Henry Radcliffe letters he spent many months attempting to decipher and then transcribe the spidery writing of his forebear with a view to introducing him to a wider public in England as well as in California and Australia. He is married and lives in Islington in north London.
