No wonder Josiah Wedgwood, the 18th-century master potter, was a darling of the Victorians. From W.E. Gladstone to Samuel Smiles of Self-Help fame, they admired this industrious, inventive, uxorious and religious man as a harbinger of their own age.
It surely helped that his story, if not exactly one of rags to riches, was certainly a tale of triumph over adversity. His biggest obstacle was one he did his best to conceal from a carefully constructed public image. Though Joshua Reynolds painted his portrait and George Stubbs did a family study showing Josiah, his wife Sarah and their seven children in the grounds of his country house, Etruria Hall, neither likeness hinted that Wedgwood had a wooden leg.
His lower right leg was removed without anaesthetic on what he cheerfully christened ‘St Amputation Day’ in 1768, when he was 38, following complications after a carriage accident. But it had hobbled him for much longer, since a bout of smallpox at the age of 12.
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