James Sawyer

Sir James Sawyer (11 August 1844 – 19 January 1919) was a British physician and cancer researcher famous in his day as a public educator in health matters, an early proponent of "daily habits".

Childhood in Carlisle

James Sawyer was born in Carlisle on 11 August 1844, probably at 23 Fisher Street, above his father’s chemist shop. His father (also called James) had bought the business two years earlier from a man about to go bankrupt. Discovering it was for sale while working in a chemist’s shop at Ross-on-Wye, he promptly married Anne George, the daughter of a saddler, and returned to Carlisle.

James and Anne’s chemist shop stood near the Old King’s Head, run by James’s father (another James). Born in Martlesham, Suffolk, he had joined the Chestnut Troop of the Royal Artillery, which fought in many battles of the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. After the war, his commanding officer, Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross, married a Cumberland heiress and moved to Stonehouse in the parish of Hayton, eight miles from Carlisle. As he cared about Sawyer’s welfare and often visited him, he was probably instrumental in Sawyer's move to Carlisle in the 1820s. In the town, Sawyer was celebrated as a Waterloo veteran and almost certainly shared stories of his wartime exploits with his young grandson, James.

Information about James’s early years is scarce. He was lucky to survive childhood, as child mortality in the city was high. Three of his six siblings died as children, and six of his father’s ten siblings also died young. He may have attended Carlisle Grammar School, as his father donated one pound to its extension fund in 1851. By age sixteen, he worked as an apprentice in his father’s shop. Then, in October 1861, his life changed radically.