Company and licensed to practise. He became assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's in 1744 and full surgeon from 1749 till 1787. He died in London on the 22nd of December 1788. The first surgeon of his day in England, excelling even his pupil, John Hunter, on the practical side, he introduced various important innovations in procedure, doing much to abolish the extensive use of escharotics and the actual cautery that was prevalent when he began his career. A particular form of fracture of the ankle which he sustained through a fall from his horse in 1756 is still described as Pott's fracture, and his book, Some few Remarks upon Fractures and Dislocations, published in 1768 and translated into French and Italian, had a far-reaching influence in Great Britain and France. “ Pott's disease ” is a spinal affection of which he gave an excellent clinical description in his Remarks on that kind of Palsy of the Lower Limbs which is frequently found to accompany a Curvature of the Spine (1779). Among his other writings the most noteworthy are A Treatise on Ruptures (1756), Observations on the Nature and Consequences of those Injuries to which the Head is liable from external violence (1768), and Chirurgical Observations (1775). There are several editions of his collected works; that published by Sir James Earle in 1790 contains a sketch of his life.
POTTER, ALONZO (1800–1865), American bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, was born at Beekman (now La
Grange), Dutchess county, New York, on the 6th of July ISOO.
His ancestors, English Friends, settled in Portsmouth, Rhode
Island, between 1640 and 1660; his father was a farmer, a
Quaker, and in 1798 and in 1814 was a member of the New York
Assembly. The son graduated at Union College in 1818, and
in 1821–1826 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy
there. In 1824 he was ordained priest, and married a
daughter of President Eliphalet Nott of Union College; she died
in 1839, and in 1841 he married her cousin. He was rector of
St Paul's Boston, from 1826 to 1831, when he became professor
of moral and intellectual philosophy and political economy at
Union. In 1838 he refused the post of assistant bishop of the
eastern diocese (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and
Rhode Island). He was vice-president of Union College in
1838–1845. After the suspension of Henry Ustick Onderdonk
(1789–1858) from the bishopric of Pennsylvania Potter was
chosen to succeed him, and was consecrated on the 23rd of
September 1845. Owing to his failing health he visited England
and France in 1858, and in April 1864 sailed from New York
for California, but died on board ship in San Francisco harbour
on the 4th of July 1865.
In 1846 he established the western and north-eastern convocations of priests in his diocese; from 1850 to 1860, when its corner-stone was laid, he laboured for the “Hospital of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia "; and in 1861 he established the Philadelphia Divinity Scliool. In 1842 with George B. Emerson (1797–1871) he published The School and the Schoolmaster, which had a large circulation and great influence. In 1847, 1848, 1849 and 1853 he delivered five courses of lectures on the Lowell Institute foundation. He advocated temperance reform and frequently delivered a lecture on the Drinking Usages of Society (1852); he was an opponent of slavery and published a reply to the pro-slavery arguments of Bishop John Henry Hopkins (1792–1868) of Vermont. He edited many reprints and collections of sermons and lectures, and wrote: Political Economy (1840), The Principles of Science applied to the Domestic and Mechanic Arts (1841), Handbook for Readers and Students (1843), and Religious Philosophy (1870). See M. A. de lVolfe Howe, Memoirs of the Life and Services of the Right Reverend Alonzo Potter, D.D. (Philadelphia, 1871). His brother, HORATIO POTTER (1802–1887), was born in Beekman, New York, on the 9th of February 1802. He graduated at Union College in 1826, was ordained a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1828, was rector for several months in Saco, Maine, and in 1828–1833 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Washington (now Trinity) College, Hartford, Connecticut. In 1833–1854 he was rector of St Peter's, Albany; in November 18 54 he was elected provincial bishop of New York in place of Benjamin Tredwell Onderdonk (1791–1861), who had been suspended, and upon Onderdonk's death he became bishop. In 1868 his diocese was divided, the new dioceses of Albany, Central New York and Long Island being separated from it. Bishop Potter attended the Lambeth conferences of 1867 and 1868. His failing health put an end to his active service in 1883, when his nephew, H. C. Potter (q.v.), became his assistant. He died in New York City on the 2nd of January 1887.
POTTER, HENRY CODMAN (1835–1908), American Protestant
Episcopal bishop, the son of Bishop Alonzo Potter, was
born in Schenectady, New York, on the 25th of May 1835. He
was educated in the Philadelphia Academy of the Protestant
Episcopal Church and in the Theological Seminary of Virginia,
where he graduated in 1857. He was ordained deacon in 1857
and priest in 1858; was rector of Christ Church, Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, in 1858–1859, and of St John's Church, Troy,
N. Y., in 1859–1866; refused the presidency of Kenyon College
in 1863 and the bishopric of Iowa in 1875; was secretary of
the House of Bishops in 1866–1883; and was assistant rector
of Trinity Church, Boston, in 1866–1868, and rector of Grace
Church, New York City, in 1868–1884. In October 1883 he was
consecrated assistant to his uncle, Horatio Potter, bishop of
New York, and in 1887 succeeded him. The Rev. David Hummell
Greer (b. 1844) became his coadjutor in September 1903, and
succeeded to the bishopric after the death of Bishop Potter in
Cooperstown, N. Y., on the 21st of July 1908. During Bishop
Potter's administration the corner-stone of the Cathedral of
St John the Divine was laid (in 1892).
He was notable for his interest in social reform and in politics: as rector of Grace Church he worked to make it an “institutional church” with working-men's clubs, day nurseries, kindergartens, &c., and he took part in the summer work of the missions on the east side in New York City long after he was bishop; in 1900 he attacked the Tammany mayor (Robert A. Van Wyck) of New York City, accusing the city government of protecting vice, and was a leader in the reform movement which elected Seth Low mayor in the same year; he frequently assisted in settling labour disputes; he worked for the re-establishment of the army canteen and attempted to improve the saloon, which he called the “poor man's club” — notably by his taking part in the opening (August, 1904) of the unsuccessful Subway Tavern. He published: Sisterhoods and Deaconesses at Home and Abroad (1872); The Gates of the East (1876), a book of travels; Sermons of the City (1881); Waymarks (1892); The Scholar and the State (1897); The East of To-day and To-morrow (1902); The Industrial Situation (1902); Law and Loyalty (1903), and Reminiscences of Bishops and Arch-Bishops (1906).
See Harriett A. Kayser, Bishop Potter, the People's Friend (New York, 1910).
His brother, Clarkson Nott Potter (1825–1882), was a civil engineer, then (1848–1868) a practising lawyer in New York City, and in 1869–1875 and in 1877–1881 a Democratic member of the National House of Representatives. Another brother, Robert Brown Potter (1829–1887), a lawyer and a soldier, commanded the 51st New York Volunteers at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run and Antietam, was wounded at Antietam and at Petersburg, was commissioned major-general of volunteers in September 1865, and was mustered out in 1866. A third brother, Eliphalet Nott Potter (1836–1901), was rector of the Church of the Nativity, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1862–1869, was professor of ethics in Lehigh University in 1869–1871, and was president of Union College in 1871–1884, of Hobart College in 1884–1897, and of Cosmopolitan University, a correspondence school, in 1897–1901.
POTTER, JOHN (c. 1674–1747), archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a linen-draper at Wakefield, Yorkshire, and was born about 1674. At the age of fourteen he entered University College, Oxford, and in 1693 he published notes on Plutarch's De audiendis poetis and Basil"s Oratio ad juvenes. In 1694 he was elected fellow of Lincoln College, and in 1697 his edition of Lycophron appeared. It was followed by his Archaeologia graeca (2 vols. 8vo, 1697–1798), the popularity of which endured till the advent of Dr William Smith's dictionaries. A reprint of his Lycophron in 1702 was dedicated to Graevius, and the Antiquities was afterwards published in Latin in the Thesaurus of Gronovius. Besides holding several livings he became in 1704 chaplain to Archbishop Tenison, and shortly afterwards was made chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Anne. From 1708 he was regius professor of divinity and canon of Christ Church, Oxford; and from 1715 he was bishop of Oxford. In the latter year appeared his edition of Clement of Alexandria. In 1707 he published a Discourse on Church Government, and he took a prominent part in the controversy with Benjamin Hoadly,
