RochdaleThomas Hayle M.D. L.R.C.S. (December 1808 – 17 September 1886) was a British orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to become Physician at the Durham Homeopathic Dispensary, the Northumberland and Newcastle Homeopathic Dispensary, and the Sunderland Homeopathic Dispensary.

Hayle was one of the founders of the Northern Homeopathic Medical Society, a member of the Hahnemann Medical Society, a medical governor for the London School of Homoeopathy, and a member of the Management Committee of the British Homeopathic Association.

Thomas Hayle was never a member of the British Homoeopathic Society but he was a respected colleague of many members of that body and an active participant in the annual Congress of British Homeopaths. In September, 1876, he was the President of the British Homoeopathic Congress held in Bristol.

Thomas Hayle knew Samuel Hahnemann personally, and he was the family doctor of Dr. Ethelbert Petrie Hoyle.

Thomas Hayle practiced at 3, Jesmond Terrace, Newcastle on Tyne and at 154 Drake Street, Rochdale.

Thomas Hayle was born at Fearon’s Place in Clarendon, Jamaica, in December 1808, the son of Dr. William Pusey Hayle (1759 – 1823) and his second wife, Frances Bryan Fearon (1772 – 1813). Frances Fearon was aunt to Birmingham homeopath Dr. George Fearon.

In 1817, Thomas Hayle accompanied his father to England and attended Tiverton Grammar School in Devon until 1825. He then proceeded to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine and was apprenticed to a Dr. Campbell.

In 1829 Hayle obtained his Licentiate from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and the following year completed the examinations for his M.D. However, Hayle was obliged to return to Jamaica before graduation, where he commenced practice.

The exertions of working long hours in the Caribbean during a smallpox outbreak caused Hayle to develop “brain fever,” and in 1837 he returned to England to recuperate. That year he was awarded his M.D. from the University of Edinburgh.

In 1838, Hayle married Sarah White Turner (1813 – 1898), sister of Dr. Edward Turner, Professor of Chemistry at the University of London. They had nine children: Anna (1839 – 1916), Mary (1841 – 1925), Sarah (1843 – ), William Pusey Hayle (1845 – 1865), Fanny Eliza (1847 – 1896), Caroline Hahnemann Hayle (1852 – 1938), Dr. Thomas Hahnemann Hayle (1855 – 1908), Edward Turner (1858 – ), and Jane Evaline Bowerbank Hayle (1861 – 1936)

Hayle purchased a private practice at Deddington, Oxfordshire. In 1840 he was visited by his cousin, Dr. George Fearon, who gave him a copy of Hahnemann‘s Organon of Medicine and persuaded him to investigate. Hayle conducted extensive research and within the year had become a convert to homeopathic medicine.

The following year, 1841, Hayle was seriously injured in a fall from his horse and was obliged to suspend work. The family relocated to Newcastle where his wife had relatives and, as his his health improved, in 1842 Hayle established the Newcastle Homoeopathic Dispensary, with himself as medical officer.

In 1852, Thomas Hayle was one of the founding members of the Northern Homeopathic Medical Society.

By 1853-4, Hayle had been joined as medical officer at the Newcastle Homoeopathic Dispensary by South Shields homeopath John Ferguson Kennedy. Together they treated more than 80 patients during a major cholera outbreak, successfully curing eighty percent of those afflicted.

In 1862, Hayle resolved to move on and, after selling his Newcastle practice to Kennedy, he purchased the Rochdale practice of veteran homeopath William Harris Cox who had moved to Manchester.

Throughout his career, Hayle was an active contributor to the homeopathic literature. In addition to authoring a number of his own books, in 1857 he translated Bernhard Hirschel‘s Rules and Examples for the Study of Pharmacodynamics. He also submitted cases, letters, and articles to various homeopathic publications, including A Case of Diarrhoea, On Self Supporting Dispensaries , On Symptomatology, On Scurvy, Haemorrhage and the Homeopathic Law, and he continued to lecture on homeopathy into his old age.

Hayle was elected President of the 1876 British Homeopathic Congress, held at Clifton, Bristol. His opening address, “The Medical World Its Parties, Its Opinions, and Their Tendencies,” was received with acclaim.

Hayle’s health began to deteriorate from 1877, but he still continued to participate in the homeopathic medical community. He delivered a paper at the Quinquennial International Homoeopathic Convention, held in London in July, 1881, and in April the following year wrote a letter in support of William Baye’s unsuccessful initiative to institute a homeopathic diploma with the credentials “L.H.”

For much of his adult life Hayle, a member of the Unitarian church, was also a committed Spiritualist and regularly contributed to Spiritualist publications.

In 1879, Hayle’s son Thomas Hahnemann Hayle graduated in medicine and took over the Rochdale practice, although Hayle senior continued prescribing for patients until the week of his death.

Hayle’s remaining months were spent under the care of his friend and colleague, Manchester physician Charles Harrison Blackley, but his health declined rapidly in the spring of 1886, and he died in his sleep on 17 September 1886.

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Thomas Hayle’s daughter Sarah (1843 – ?) married homeopath Dr. William Adam Kennedy, son of Dr. John Ferguson Kennedy, who had taken over Hayle’s Newcastle practice. The marriage was not a success, however, and Sarah filed for divorce in 1899 on the grounds of adultery and abandonment. The divorce was granted in 1900.

Thomas Hahnemann Hayle M.B. B.Sc. (4 March 1855 – 30 October 1908), son of Thomas Hayle, was a British homeopathic physician who practiced in Rochdale, Lancashire. He eventually took over his father’s practice at 154 Drake Street, Rochdale. He was an active member of the homeopathic medical community and was elected a member of the British Homoeopathic Society in 1886.

Geoffrey Hahnemann Hayle M.B. Ch.B (8 December 1901 – 3 May 1948),  son of Thomas Hahnemann Hayle, grandson of Thomas Hayle:

was a medical graduate of Manchester. Before working as a GP in Chester, he had been a house officer at London Homeopathic Hospital. Like his father, he committed suicide in 1948.

Thomas Hahnemann Hayle Ph.D. M.B. B.S (6 August 1931 – ), son of Geoffrey Hahnemann Hayle and Florence M. Taylor (1904 – 1999), great grandson of Thomas Hayle, resided at The Cottage, Oaklands, Hooton, Cheshire. In 1958 he married Janet M. Gooch.

Another Thomas Hahnemann Hayle (c.1916) graduated from the University of Manchester in 1939.

Henry Kelsall (1793 – 1869) Rochdale’s first non conformist Justice of the Peace, proposed an infirmary in Rochdale, with an amendment from Alderman Robinson for a homeopathic ward to be added to the new institution “… in recognition of the strong tradition of this medical practice in the town, because of the increased subscriptions that would accrue as a result, and with people obviously more likely to subscribe to an institution that encompassed their specific medical beliefs…” The proposal was seconded by Counsellor Hoyle and a stormy debate ensued in which is became obvious that the orthodox medical profession in the town, as represented by Doctors Elliott, March, and Wood, objected, quite vitriolically. “No connection with quacks,” was one of the phrases used by Dr. Wood, a Medical Officer in the Dispensary, at the prospect of homeopaths practicing in the proposed Infirmary. Nevertheless despite these objections the proposal was carried and a pledge of £3650 [£166,805.00 in today’s money] taken from the various people present…’ However, the course of the proposed homeopathic Rochdale Infirmary became mired in the perennial argument between old and new medicine. In Rochdale, the supporters of homeopathy were primarily non conformists, dissenters and Liberalists, and included John Bright, Benjamin Butterworth, Dr. William Harris Cox, Dr. Thomas Hayle,  Dr. George Calvert Holland, Edward Miall,  George Morris, J. K. Cheetham, and Joseph Seed amongst many others. The Homeopathic Infirmary in Rochdale was never  built as a result of all this upset. (From Helen Kelsall, “The Development of Voluntary Medical Institutions in Rochdale 1832-1872),” Transactions New Series Number 4, (1994, Rochdale Literary and Scientific Society).