| Description | Born Jonathan Wathen Phipps 6 October 1759, son of a successful iron founder, Joshua Phipps and his wife Mary (née Allen): educated at a school for the sons of gentlemen at Hackney: through the influence of his grandfather Jonathan Wathen, he took up a career in medicine, successfully specialising in the treatment of eye diseases, becoming renowned as an operator on cataracts and being appointed as Oculist to King George III:he served George IV and William IV and became a loyal friend of several members of the royal family: he took on the surname of Waller in 1814, inherited through his maternal grandmother, Anne Waller, and was created a baronet on 30 May 1815: he married Elizabeth Slack, 2nd daughter of Thomas Slack of Braywick Lodge, Berkshire on 23 February 1793: he had seven children, three of whom died in infancy (Anna Elizabeth, Thomas Waller and Thomas Slack), the 4 surviving into adulthood being Georgiana, Anna Eliza, Thomas Wathen and Ernest Adolphus: following the death of his wife Elizabeth on 20 January 1809, he subsequently married Sophia Charlotte, Baroness Howe on 1 October 1812: he died on 1 January 1853. |