Richard Bayley

Richard Bayley (1745 – August 17, 1801) was a prominent New York City physician and the first chief health officer of the city. An expert in yellow fever, he helped discover its epidemiology, improved city sanitation, and authored the federal Quarantine Act of 1799. The 1788 Doctors' Riot was sparked by fears that his students were secretly removing corpses from graves in order to dissect them. Biography Bayley was born in 1745 in Fairfield, then in the Colony of Connecticut, to a family of French Huguenot and English descent, based in New Rochelle, New York. In 1766 he was apprenticed to New York City physician John Charlton. Bayley married John's sister, Catherine Charlton, at St. John's Episcopal Church (Elizabeth, New Jersey) in 1767; her father was the rector of St. Andrew's Church (Staten Island, New York). The couple had three children, Mary Magdalen (b. 1768, m. 1790 to Wright Post), Elizabeth Ann (1774-1821, later known as Mother Seton, and the first native-born citizen of the United States to be declared a saint), and Catherine (1776–8). Richard Bayley traveled to London in 1769, where he studied anatomy with William Hunter. Bayley returned to the United States in 1772, where he opened a practice with Charlton, his father-in-law and former instructor. He returned to England in 1775 to continue his work with Hunter. A Loyalist, Bayley returned to America and enlisted in the British army as a surgeon at the start of the American Revolution and was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1777, however, the illness of his wife caused him to return to New York, where she died in May. He took no further part in the conflict. Thirteen months after his first wife's death, he married Charlotte Amelia Barclay. Three daughters and four sons were born of this marriage: Richard, Andrew Barclay, Charlotte Amelia, William, Mary Fitch, Guy Carleton (b. 1786), and Helen. Guy's son James Roosevelt Bayley became a Roman Catholic Bishop and Archbishop. They later separated.