Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cleverley, Samuel
CLEVERLEY, SAMUEL (d. 1824), physician, was the son of William Cleverley, a shipbuilder of Gravesend. After some schooling at Rochester he attended for two years the borough hospitals, whence he removed to Edinburgh and took the degree of M.D. on 24 June 1797 (inaugural essay, 'De Anasarca'). With the object of further studying his profession he went abroad, and visited Halle, Göttingen, Vienna, and Paris. He was detained a prisoner in France for no less a period than eleven years, being confined successively at Fontainebleau, Verdun, and Valenciennes. At the latter depot he passed the greater part of his detention. On his arrival he found the prisoners in the utmost need of medical assistance. 'He accordingly proposed to the committee of Verdun, an association of the principal British officers and gentlemen in France, charged with the general distribution of charitable succours obtained from England, to give them his gratuitous care, which was gladly accepted, and a dispensary was in consequence established, though not without great difficulties from the French military authorities.' Cleverley was allowed to return home in 1814, when he received for his services at Valenciennes the marked thanks of the managing committee of Lloyd's. He eventually settled in London, was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 22 Dec. 1815, and appointed one of the physicians to the London Fever Hospital. He died at his house in Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, on 10 Nov. 1824.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), iii. 141-2; Authentic Memoirs of the most Eminent Physicians and Surgeons of Great Britain (1828), p. 479.]