Sue Young Histories

Edward Cronin 1801 - 1882

June 29, 2009

Edward Cronin 1801 - 1882 MD Dublin 1828, was a pioneer of homeopathy in England and one of the founders of the Plymouth Brethren movement.

Edward Cronin was on the Medical Council of the Hahnemann Hospital at 39 Bloomsbury Square alongside William Henry Ashurst, William Thomas Berger, A E Blest, W A Case, James Chapman, John Chapman, Edward Charles Chepmell, Clare, Paul Francois Curie, J M Douglas, Robert Ellis Dudgeon, Thomas Engall, John Epps, George Fearon, G H Fletcher, John Fowler, Gill, Joseph Glover, F L R Suss Hahnemann, Robert Hamilton, Joseph Hands, Sydney Hanson, Amos Henriques, Thomas Higgs, JT H Johnstone, Henry Kelsall, Joseph Laurie, Charles Powell Leslie, Henry Victor Malan, John Miller, Augustus Henry Moreton, G P Nichols, Chas Pasley, Paterson, A P Phelps, George Rogers, J Rogers, Mathias Roth, Frederick Sandoz, Phillip Sandoz, W Stephenson, Samuel Sugden, Allan Templeton, Major Tyndale, William Warne, A Wilkinson, James John Garth Wilkinson, David Wilson, S Wilson, George Wyld,

Edward Cronin was also on the Management Committee of the English Homeopathic Association alongside William Henry Ashurst, John Burnett, Paul Francois Curie, A O Deacon, Robert S Dick, George Napoleon Epps, John Epps, Robert Frith, Joseph Glover, Robert Grosvenor, George Hayes, Thomas H Johnstone, Henry KelsallJohn Miller, Henry P Osman, William MacOubrey, Charles Thomas Pearce, William Perkins, George K Prince, James Stansfeld, Peter Stuart, Allan Templeton, James Thomson, William Warne, James Wilson,

Edward Cronin was also a member of the Hahnemann Medical Society,

Edward Cronin practiced at Claremont House, Brixton Road.

The Monthly Homeopathic Review contains the following: The late Edward Cronin, of Brixton, whose death occurred on the first of February (1882), was born in Cork in 1801.

He studied for the profession of medicine at the Meath Hospital, Dublin. During the earlier portion of his career, Dr. Cronin devoted himself to missionary work. In 1828, in conjunction with his friends, John Vesey Parnell 2nd Baron Congleton, Francis William Newman and John Kitto, he took an active part in constituting the religious body now known as the Plymouth Brethren.

His first wife having died in 1829 - a year after marriage - Dr. Cronin, in company with the friends we have named, went to the East as a missionary. When in Bagdad, an epidemic of the plague broke out and Dr. Cronin exerted himself strenuously to relieve the physical wants of those by whom he was surrounded.

In 1835 he left Syria for the Madras Presidency of India, when he again devoted himself to religious and medical work.

In 1837 he returned to England, and now his acquaintance with Homeopathy commenced. In 1838 he married a daughter of John Kennaway 2nd Baronet, of Escot, Devon, and after practicing for a short time in Islington and in Stafford, he finally settled in Brixton, where he has since resided, and been engaged in a very extensive practice, enjoying not only the confidence, but the warm affection of a large circle of friends.

Dr. Cronin’s eldest son, Eugene Cronin, is the well known homeopathic physician at Clapham, while another is the honorary dentist to the London Homeopathic Hospital. (Month. Hom. Rev., Vol. 26, p. 193.)

Cronin was born in 1801 in Cork, Ireland before moving to Dublin for health reasons in about 1826.

In Dublin he studied medicine at the Meath Hospital, and later utilised his medical ability on Anthony Norris Groves’ pioneering mission to Baghdad.

After the death of his wife in 1829, Cronin went with Anthony Norris Groves to administer medical support including dealing with an outbreak of plague. While in Persia and later India, he also dealt with cholera and typhus using homeopathic principles.

Cronin returned to England in 1836, where, as a medical practitioner, he became an early adopter of homeopathy in the UK - Cronin is estimated to be the fifth such practitioner to introduce homeopathy.

He was a member of the English Homeopathic Association, and in 1858 he became the last man to become a Lambeth MD before the Medical Act 1858 abolished this particular qualification. Cronin remarried and settled in Brixton where he lived until his death in 1882.

Cronin’s eldest son Eugene Cronin also took up homeopathic practice, and another of his sons became honorary dentist to the London Homeopathic Hospital.

Originally a Roman Catholic, when Cronin moved to Dublin he sought membership with various dissenting churches in the area but was only admitted as a visitor. He began meeting with other Christians including Anthony Norris Groves, John Gifford Bellet and John Nelson Darby, whose conviction that the ordination of clergy was unnecessary and unscriptural, as well as his dispensationalist and premillenialist theology which later became principle tenets of the Plymouth Brethren movement.

Of interest:

Charlotte Cronin, daughter of Edward Cronin, married John Henry Lowe (see below).

Charlotte Cronin Lowe Arnell Locke 1911 - 2008, daughter of Edward Cronin Lowe, great granddaughter of Edward Cronin:

Born Aug. 5, 1911, in Southport, England to homeopathic surgeon Edward Cronin Lowe and artist Helena Maud Cronin Lowe, Charlotte attended both Heatherley School of Art and the Slade Art School in London. She married Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell, musician/composer, and the two immigrated to the United States in

  1. They settled in Manhattan. There she had her first daughter and began her career in advertising illustration. Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell returned to England. A few years later, Charlotte married international artist’s representative John Locke at the Locke Farm in Vermont. Her second daughter was born on Long Island. They, too, settled in Manhattan where they lived in a flat above his studio. In 1948, Charlotte and her two daughters moved to Los Angeles, Calif., where she continued her long, illustrious career with a shift to fashion illustration. Her fashion ads for Bullock’s Wilshire, a premiere department store in the Art Deco tradition, became well known in the industry and by consumers alike. Other fashion illustrators came to emulate her trend-setting style. For almost 40 years, Charlotte’s ads owned the back page of the Los Angeles Times. During her life, Charlotte traveled widely (Africa, Europe, Greece, New Zealand): she effected her last move to Lincoln City in 1988. Here, she became a volunteer at the Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital; she created her final public art piece for their volunteer organization. Charlotte is survived by her daughter Jessie M. Page, author; daughter Elizabeth Locke, painter; grandson Josh Klayman, musician; numerous nieces and nephews in England and New Zealand; and her first husband.

Edward Cronin Lowe 1880 - 1958 MB, BS London, MD Chicago, FRIPHH MBE, son of Charlotte Cronin, grandson of Edward Cronin, was a British homeopath in 1938. He married Helena Fruen in 1905, and they had three daughters, one of whom married Professor R M Gordon who worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. In 1938, his daughter Charlotte Augusta Cronin Lowe married Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell, professor of composition at London’s Trinity College of Music for many years, they had one daughter, though they divorced in 1946.

Edward Cronin Lowe was born in Dunedin New Zealand, the son of a railway engineer, educated at Wellington College, he travelled to England in 1899.

In 1905, Edward Cronin Lowe graduated MBBS and became a physician at Guy’s Hospital.

1907 - 1915 Edward Cronin Lowe was in general practice in Southport, and also in 1907, Edward Cronin Lowe was practicing from 31 Church Street, Southport (still listed at this address in 1947), and he was a member of the British Homeopathic Society.

In 1911, Edward Cronin Lowe was a Physician at the North of England Southport Children’s Sanatorium.

1916 - 1919 **Edward Cronin Lowe **served as a Pathologist to the New Zealand Division as Captain in the New Zealand Medical Corps in 1914 - 1918, and was awarded MBE, SSW for his work on immunisation during the influenza epidemic of 1918.

1919 - 1948 Edward Cronin Lowe worked as Honorary Consultant Pathologist to the Southport Infirmary, and he also worked at the Liverpool Eye and Ear Infirmary and at the Liverpool Homeopathic Hospital.

In 1936 - 1937 Edward Cronin Lowe was Chairman of the Southport Division of the British Medical Association.

In 1936, Edward Cronin Lowe was Director of the Pathology Department and Consultant of Pathology at the North of England Southport Children’s Sanatorium, until 1943. Edward Cronin Lowe was an ardent researcher into cancer, vaccines, and blood transfusions.

Edward Cronin Lowe invented the concept of the Blood Bank (Lewis Foreman, *Richard Arnell: Unjustly neglected composer who has found a new audience through recent recordings, The Independent__, *Saturday 09 May 2009. ’… In 1938 he married Charlotte Augusta Cronin-Lowe, the daughter of Edward Cronin-Lowe, a notable homeopathic surgeon, and the inventor of the concept of the bloodbank…‘) Edward Cronin Lowe was a sponsor at the Anglo French Hospital at Neuilly sur Seine.

The Obituary of Edward Cronin Lowe is published in *The British Medical Journal 10.5.1958 page 1126-1127 *(which credits Edward Cronin Lowe as the first person to set up a blood bank in the Merseyside region).

Edward Cronin Lowe submitted cases and articles to various homeopathic and other publications.

Eugene Francis Cronin 1839? - 1922?, son of Edward Cronin, was also a homeopath, and a member of the British Homeopathic Society, and a physician at the London Homeopathic Hospital, and he was a sponsor of the Anglo French Hospital at Neuilly sur Seine.

Eugene Cronin submitted cases and articles to various homeopathic publications.

Eugene Cronin practiced at 31, Old Town, Clapham Common.

John Henry Lowe 1841 - 1928

M. Inst. C.E., Chief Engineer for Working Railways for New Zealand, is an old and experienced officer, having been in the Civil Service for about thirty years. Born in 1841 in London, he was educated in his native city and in Devonshire. He came out to Melbourne in 1864 per ship “True Briton,” and, crossing the Tasman Sea, landed in Nelson in the same year. Almost immediately on his arrival, Mr. Lowe entered the public service in the Survey Department at Nelson, where he soon rose to the position of District Surveyor and Engineer. In 1869 he was appointed Resident Magistrate and Warden of the Nelson South West Goldfields, but resigned in the following year and left on an extended trip to England. When in England, Mr. Lowe married Miss Charlotte Cronin, daughter of the late Edward Cronin, Esq., M.D., of London. His family numbers seven, one daughter and six sons. On his return to New Zealand in 1872, he entered the then recently established Public Works Department, being entrusted with the construction of the railway line as far as the Hutt. After the completion of this section, Mr. Love went to Otago to superintend the construction of the railway between Waitahi and Palmerston South. This work was completed in 1877, when the subject of this notice was appointed engineer in charge of open railways in Canterbury. This position he retained till 1880, when he was transferred to Dunedin as officer in charge of the Amberley Bluff section of New Zealand Railways. Mr. Lowe continued in this position till 1887 when he was promoted to the important post now held by him. In 1874 he was elected a Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers.

Joycelyn Cronin Lowe MD Pathologist, eldest daughter of Edwin Cronin Lowe,


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