John Abraham Mason

Awarded part of the compensation for the enslaved people at Boroughbridge (variously given as Boro or Burrow Bridge) in St Ann Jamaica, as heir at law and executor of Abraham Mason.

1. The will of John Abraham Mason Doctor in Physic of Doncaster Yorkshire, proved 27/1/1837, refers to property in the West Indies and to his wife Harriet, to whom he bequeathed an annuity of £200 p.a., and in a codicil he refers to his 'surgical and philosophical instruments and apparatus' and bequeaths his hygrometers to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. The will also appears to exclude the descendants of his two uncles (one named as John, the other illegible but possibly Bernard) who died in the West Indies from his general bequest to his first and second cousins. An advertisement for the descendants of this man was placed in 1882, when he was stated to have died at Nice on 20/10/1836.

2. John Abraham Mason married Harriet Tress at St Martin Ludgate 06/10/1832.

3. John Abraham Mason, a surgeon of Pentonville, described and named 'Mason's Hygrometer' in 1836. His description of it alludes to observations taken in Madeira. The experience in Madeira and in particular the allusion to scientific equipment and hygrometers in the will of John Abraham Mason of Doncaster confirms that it is the same man.

T71/857 St Ann no. 562A. John Abraham Mason, absentee, heir at law and executor of Abraham Mason, and creditor of Stephen Breary (sp?) for a moiety.

1. PROB 11/1871; London Gazette 25810 24/4/1888 p. 2359.

2. London England Marriages and Banns 1754-1921.

3. Gerard L'E Turner, Nineteenth-century Scientific Instruments, Sotheby Publications, University of California Press (1983) pp. 241 and 243; Robert Dundas Thomson, Thomas Thomson, Records of General Science Vol. 4 (1836), pp. 96-110.