Publisher's Synopsis
In 1840, Charles Locock delivered the first of Queen Victoria's children and was presented with a plate from Prince Albert bearing the inscription, 'To the Great Deliverer of His Country.' By 1858, he had safely delivered a further eight and held the largest obstetrics practice in London. On his retirement in 1864, he moved to a substantial residence on the Isle of Wight only four miles from the Queen's residence at Osborne House and the two families exchanged frequent visits. It is also alleged that he temporarily came out of retirement in 1867 not only to deliver in secret the illegitimate son of the flirtatious Princess Louise but also to arrange for one of his own sons to adopt the child. In the wake of of the positive identification of the Romanov remains in 1992, the Locock family then set the wheels in motion for a petition to extract a DNA sample from the said child's remains to try and establish the validity of the 'Locock legend', a procedure that attracted considerable media attention at the time. But for many years after his own death, Sir Charles Locock remained a household name and the medical profession owes much both to his pioneering work as a male obstetrician in the mid-nineteenth century and his significant work in the treatment of epilepsy. While other physicians have been cited as being close to the Queen, none could have been closer than Locock himself.
