DICTIONARY
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NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
Clater1 ClaterCLATER, FRANCIS (1756–1823), farrier, wrote the popular works 'Every Man his own Cattle Doctor' (1810) and 'Every Man his own Farrier.' In the preface to the last-named work, which was published at Newark in 1783, when the writer was twenty-six, Clater describes himself as 'farrier, late of Newark,' and states that he served a regular apprenticeship and one year as journeyman to 'the late W. Frost, farrier, of Nottingham, and being his nephew, succeeded to all the secrets of his profession.' The work was published at the desire of the numerous gentlemen and farmers who were Clater's employers, and appears to have roused the hostility of farriers generally. The writer insists chiefly on careful diagnosis of individual cases, and the use of pure drugs. Clater afterwards resided for many years at East Retford, where he practised as a chemist and druggist, as well as a cattle doctor, and, according to the inscription on a small memorial tablet set up in the methodist chapel in Newgate Street in that town, was much respected, and there died, on 29 May 1823, in the sixty-seventh year of his age (Pierce, Hist. of East Retford, 1828). The publication of the above-mentioned works marked a stage in veterinary progress, and their lasting popularity may be judged from the fact that, at the hands of the writer's son, John Clater, and subsequent editors, the former went through over twelve, and the latter over thirty editions. In the later ones — as the edition of 'Every Man his own Farrier' by Mayhew, published in 1850, and of the 'Cattle Doctor' by Armytage, published in 1870 — much exploded conjecture has been omitted, and the text almost entirely rewritten.
[Clater's Works; Gent. Mag. xciii. (i.) 474, where Clater's age is wrongly given; Pierce's Hist. of East Retford.]
CLATER, THOMAS (1789–1867), painter, third son of Francis Clater [q. v.], farrier, of East Retford, Nottinghamshire, and Anne his wife, was baptised on 9 June 1789 at East Retford. He first exhibited in London in 1819 at the British Institution, sending two pictures, ‘Children at a Spring’ and ‘Puff and Dart, or the Last Shilling—a Provincial Game,’ and at the Royal Academy, to which he sent ‘The Game at Put, or the Cheat detected.’ In 1820 he exhibited at the Royal Academy a portrait of his brother John Clater, and in 1823 portraits of Mr. C. Warren and of his father Francis Clater; the latter picture was subsequently engraved by Lupton. Clater continued to send many pictures to the Royal Academy, British Institution. Suffolk Street Gallery, and all the principal exhibitions in the country every year up to 1863. In 1843 he was elected a fellow of the Society of British Artists. His pictures were popular and of a class that was easily appreciated by the public. They were usually of a quietly humorous character, scenes from domestic and provincial life, and executed in a manner based on that of the Dutch genre painters. In the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool there is a picture by him representing ‘A Chief of Gipsies dividing Spoil with his Tribe.’ Others which attracted attention were ‘The Fortune-Teller Dressing for a Masquerade,’ ‘The Morning Lecture,’ ‘Christmas in the Country,’ ‘Sir Roger de Coverley,’ ‘The Music Lesson,’ ‘The Smugglers' Cave,’ ‘Sunday Morning,’ ‘Preparing for the Portrait,’ &c. Clater resided for the latter portion of his life in Chelsea. So prolific a painter as he was is always liable to incur difficulties in disposing of his pictures; Clater was no exception, and as his pictures latterly failed to find purchasers, he became involved in pecuniary troubles, and had to be relieved from the
