DR RICHARD VICARY/VICKERY GORHAM
Richard was born in 1815 in Walton, Suffolk to Richard and Frances Diana Gorham and baptised on 10th September.
In 1836 he qualified as a doctor, from St Bartholomew’s in London. He was a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He married clergyman’s daughter Hannah Ward in 1843 in the Hartismere district of Suffolk. By 1851 they had moved to Aldeburgh’s High Street where Richard was occupied as Surgeon. They had three young daughters, Helen, Alice and Emily. Visiting were Hannah’s sisters Caroline and Laura. Richard employed four servants: a cook, a nursemaid, a house servant and a groom. So perhaps he had a horse (and carriage?) for visiting patients.
By 1860 the family had moved to Yoxford, where they lived at Sans Souci, on what is now the A12, and Richard was the village doctor until his death in 1898. On the 1861 census there are two more daughters and Hannah’s sister Caroline is now boarding with the family, unmarried and living on independent means. They are still employing a cook, a nursemaid and a housemaid but now also a 13-year old page. By 1871 there is another daughter, Caroline, born eight years earlier. In 1881 the servants include a stable lad groom and a washerwoman. Hannah died in 1884 but in 1891 Richard still has three unmarried daughters at home as well as his sister-in-law, Caroline, now aged 73.
In the Medical Directory for 1890 he is listed as being a Consultant for the Royal Life Boat Institution and a contributor to The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. In Kelly’s Directory for 1892 he is listed as Surgeon and Admiralty Surgeon, and Agent, Minsmere Haven and Dunwich detachment.
He died 18th July 1898 and left over £2,000 in probate.
Sans Souci became a bed and breakfast a few years ago and changed hands in 2017 and was re-named Copperbeech.
