402 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
Soon after he began business, a circumstance occurred, which not only tended
to increase his professional fame, but proved the origin of no less an incident
in his domestic history than that of “setting up a carriage.” One day Mr.
James Dempster, jeweller in the Parliament Square, after a fit of hard drinking,
threatened, in the company of some of his cronies, to cut his own throat.
One of the individuals present (Mr. Hamilton of Wishaw), a gentleman of
very convivial habits, jocularly said--“I will Bave you that trouble;” and,
suiting the action to the word, advanced with a knife in a threatening attitude
towards the jeweller, and very nearly converted jest into earnest, by accidentally
making a severe incision. Hamilton, in a state of great alarm, instantly sent
for Mr. Bennet, who closed up the wound, and afterwards effected a rapid cure
of his patient. Mr. Hamilton was so much satisfied with the important service
rendered on this occasion, that he presented Mr. Bennet with an elegant
chariot.
of a well-bred
gentleman, and was accustomed to mix in the best society. With the
late Duke of Gordon (then Marquis of Huntly), Made of Panmure (Lord
Panmure), and many other persons of family, he was on terms of intimacy.
He is accused of having occasionally indulged in those excesses and frolics
which, some thirty years ago, were deemed extremely fashionable. On one
occasion, having lost a sporting bet for “dinner and drink,” Mr. Bennet
entertained his friends in a house of good cheer at Leith. It had been a
condition of the wager that the party should be taken to the theatre at
night at the expense of the loser. After dinner Mr. Bennet caused the wine,
as well as a more stimulating beverage, to be pretty freely circulated; so
that the wassailers were soon, according to the notions of the Indians, in a
“state of perfect happiness.” At the hour appointed, instead of the common
hackney conveyances, a number of mourning coaches drew up, in which
the revellers seated themselves, and were driven to the theatre in slow time,
amid the wonderment of a numerous crowd, who were no less astonished at
the mirth of the mourners than amazed at the place where the procession
halted.
These and other unprofessional frolics did not injure Mr. Bennet in his
career ; on the contrary, they rather tended to increase his celebrity. He was
appointed Surgeon to the Garrison of Edinburgh Castle in 1791 ; and elected
President of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803. And such was his status
among the citizens in 1805, that, when the volunteer corps called the “ Loyal
Edinburgh Spearmen” were embodied, he held the honourable commission of
Lieut.-Colonel Commandant of the regiment.
This band of citizen warriors had their stand of colours delivered to them
on the 12th of August, in Heriot’s Hospital Green. We quote the following
brief account of it :-
Mr. Bennet possessed the polish and pleasant manners
“The colours were presented by Mra. Bennet, the Colonel’s lady, and Miss Scott of Logie, with
an appropriate speech from each ; and consecrated by the Rev. Mr. Brunton, one of the ministem
