[ Sir Charles Locock, Physician Accoucheur to Queen Victoria. ] Autograph Note Signed ('C Locock') to 'Dr Farre', i.e. John Richard Farre, regarding a visit to 'Miss Gladstone', with Farre's Autograph Note in reply, complaining of postal delivery.

2pp., 16mo. Bifolium. In fair condition, lighly aged at extremities, with the second leaf, carrying the address ('Dr. Farre | Charter House Square', with postmark), laid down on part of a leaf removed from an album. Locock's note, on the recto of the first leaf, reads: 'My dear Sir - | We will not trouble you to call on Miss Gladstone tomorrow, as she remains much the same, and they are rather anxious to get out of Town.-' Farre's unsigned reply, on the reverse, complains that Locock's letter 'reached my hands too late to prevent on the 31st. the painful because useless Visit which I paid Miss Gladstone & to accomplish which I postponed a case even more important than her own.' He points out that the postmark is '7 night 30 Mh: 1830', and thus 'could not reach Charter House Sq. until the 2d. delivery on ye following day'. In any case, he would not have received it if it had been earlier, as he does not go 'to Charter house Sq. until one oClock'. According to Locock's entry in the Oxford DNB, he 'for many years had the largest practice in London as an accoucheur' and in 1840 was appointed 'first physician accoucheur to Queen Victoria, and attended at the births of all her children, using chloroform in later ones'. Farre's entry in the ODNB states that he 'founded and edited […] the first ophthalmic periodical', the Journal of Morbid Anatomy, Ophthalmic Medicine, and Pharmaceutical Analysis. He published works in a number of medical fields, and his pathological specimens are preserved in the museum of St Bartholomew's Hospital.