Christopher Packe

Who was Christopher Packe?

Christopher Packe was a physician and geologist. His 1743 work A New Philosophico-chorographical Chart of East Kent was the first geological map of Southern England.

Packe was born at St. Albans, Hertfordshire, on 6 March 1686. He was probably the son of Christopher Packe the chemist. Packe was admitted to Merchant Taylors' School on 11 September 1695. He was created M.D. at Cambridge in 1717, and was admitted a candidate of the College of Physicians on 25 June 1723. At the request of Robert Romney, the then vicar, he gave an organ to the Church of St Peter, St. Albans, the organ being inaugurated on 16 January 1726.

About 1726 Packe settled at Canterbury. He married Mary Randolph, of the Precincts, Canterbury, on 30 July 1726 at Canterbury Cathedral. He practiced as a physician with much reputation for nearly a quarter of a century. Packe died on 15 November 1749, and was buried in St. Mary Magdalene, Canterbury.

His son Christopher graduated M.B. in 1751 as a member of Peterhouse, Cambridge, practised as a physician at Canterbury, and published An Explanation of ... Boerhaave's Aphorisms . . . of Phthisis Pulmonalis in 1754. He died on 21 October 1800, aged 72, and was buried by the side of his father.