Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Herapath, William
HERAPATH, WILLIAM (1796–1868), analytical chemist, was born at Bristol in 1796. His father was a maltster in St. Philip's parish, and after his death Herapath succeeded to the business. He soon gave it up in order to study chemistry. He was one of the founders of the Chemical Society of London, of which he was a fellow, and also of the Bristol Medical School, of which he became professor of chemistry and toxicology on its first opening in 1828. On 13 April 1835, at the trial of a woman named Burdock for poisoning by arsenic her lodger, Mrs. Clara Ann Smith, at Bristol, Herapath was examined for the prosecution, and gained considerable reputation by his analysis. He was consequently retained in many other important criminal and civil trials, and was frequently opposed to Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor, notably in the case of William Palmer of Rugeley in 1856, when he was a witness for the defence. He was severely handled by the attorney-general, Sir A. Cockburn, who denounced him as a ‘thoroughgoing partisan.’ In politics Herapath was once an ardent radical. At the time of the reform agitation of 1831 he was president of the Bristol Political Union, and exerted himself to quell the rioting of October 1831. On the passing of the Municipal Reform Act Herapath became a member of the town council, and ultimately a justice of the peace. His radicalism became cold, and he consequently lost his seat on the council. He died on 13 Feb. 1868. His eldest son, William Bird Herapath, M.D., F.R.S., a distinguished toxicologist, died on 12 Oct. of the same year. Herapath wrote ‘instructions’ for Clifton Cleve's ‘Hints on Domestic Sanitation,’ 12mo, London, 1848; and ‘A Few Words on the Bristol and Clifton Hot-wells. Together with an Analysis of the Spa,’ 12mo, Bristol (1854?), which was subsequently embodied in the ‘Handbook for Visitors to the Bristol and Clifton Hotwells,’ 12mo, Bristol (1865?).
[Western Daily Press, 15 Feb. 1868; Bristol Times and Mirror, 15 Feb. 1868; Herapath's Railway Journal, 22 Feb. 1868, p. 205; Chemical News, 1868, pp. 97, 213; Gent. Mag. 4th ser. v. 404, 544; Nicholls and Taylor's Bristol Past and Present, iii. 326, 329.]