John Rolph (4 March 1793 – 19 October 1870) was a Canadian medical doctor, lawyer, and political figure. As a politician, he was considered the leader of the Reform faction in the 1820s and helped plan the Upper Canada Rebellion. As a doctor, he founded several medical schools and incorporated new teaching techniques and medical procedures into his lectures. However, his actions against rival medical schools decreased public confidence in the ability of medical professionals to regulate themselves.
Rolph grew up in England and was educated in medicine and law. He immigrated to Upper Canada in 1813 and lived on his father's farm in Port Talbot, where he practiced law and medicine concurrently and opened a medical school called the Talbot Dispensary. In 1824, Rolph was elected to the Parliament of Upper Canada and returned to England to petition the Colonial Office to allow the naturalization of American citizens in Canada. He was elected as an alderman to Toronto's first city council, though he resigned after his council colleagues did not select him to be the city's mayor.
William Lyon Mackenzie persuaded Rolph to support the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837. When the rebellion began, Rolph did not join the rebels at their headquarters and the Lieutenant Governor appointed him as his emissary to deliver the government's offer of a truce. Rolph fled to the US after the rebellion and focused on practising and teaching medicine. The Canadian government granted him amnesty and he returned to Canada in 1843, later creating a new medical institution called the Rolph School in Toronto. In 1851 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and focused on his political career; upon the formation of the Morin-MacNab administration three years later, Rolph's priority returned to running his school. He retired as dean of his medical school in 1870 and died later that year after suffering a stroke.
Early life and education Rolph was born on 4 March 1793, in Thornbury, Gloucestershire. His father was Thomas Rolph, a surgeon from Grovesend. His mother was Frances Petty. Rolph was their fourth child and eldest surviving son. He was baptized at St. Mary's parish church. He moved to Cambridge in 1809 to study law and medicine at St John's College, Cambridge, then transferred to the Inner Temple, London, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to study law in 1811.
In 1812 he travelled to Upper Canada to join his parents, who had emigrated four years prior. The ship he was travelling on was to make port at New York City; while he was crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the War of 1812 began and Rolph received a special passport from American president James Madison to travel to Upper Canada. Rolph went to the Niagara River intending to continue travelling to Canada when it was safe to cross the river. While waiting, he tried to solve one of Euclid's geometry problems; his problem-solving tactic involved drawing shapes. American authorities suspected these were sketches of Fort Niagara and arrested him. He was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Greenbush, New York. While imprisoned, he taught mathematics and grammar to other prisoners to alleviate his boredom. After the 13 October 1812 Battle of Queenston Heights, American forces released him in a prisoner swap with the British and he finished his journey to Canada to live on his father's farm in Port Talbot.
Upon its creation in 1813, Rolph became paymaster for the 2nd Norfolk militia. Rolph was sent by Thomas Talbot, the colonel in charge of the militia, to York to ask for aide from the Upper Canadian government after Americans destroyed most of the mills west of Burlington. Rolph remained employed with the militia after the war, possibly because his family needed the wages to sustain themselves. The deputy inspector of accounts, a British government administrator, accused Rolph of accepting claims from officers who did not provide the appropriate vouchers. Although Rolph denied this accusation, he was considered in default to the government and his application for of land as a retired officer was denied. Rolph initiated an organizing committee to honour Thomas Talbot as the founder of Port Talbot and Rolph inaugurated the first celebration of the town's creation on 21 May 1817.
In August 1817, Rolph returned to England to solve financial problems related to his father's estate and to obtain lawyer and medical qualifications. In 1820 he began studying at St John's College in Cambridge. He negotiated payments from his cousin concerning the sale of property in Thornbury that belonged to their families. He used the money to enrol in Guy's Hospital and St Thomas' Hospital to study medicine and to return to study law at Trinity Hall. On 20 April 1820, he married Mary Slatter; although recorded in a wedding register, Rolph never referenced the marriage in his documents.
Rolph was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1821. In September he returned to North America, settled in Charlotteville Township, and was called to the bar in Upper Canada. He bought a farm in St. Thomas, and became a barrister. He opened a law office in Vittoria and practised law and medicine concurrently. In 1823 he was elected as a school trustee and moved to Dundas, the following year. He would make frequent visits to York, Upper Canada, and converse with reformers and political figures William Warren Baldwin, Marshall Spring Bidwell, and Robert Baldwin about Upper Canada politics. Rolph dubbed this group "the cabinet". He worked with Charles Duncombe to provide medical services in Upper Canada. In 1823 Rolph and Duncombe opened a medical school called the Talbot Dispensary in St. Thomas. It closed after two years of operation.
Reform politician Rolph was discontent with the political clique that ruled Upper Canada called the Family Compact, which concentrated political power in the colony to a small group of conservative families. The group's political influence stalled government infrastructure, such as building roads throughout the colony, and made it difficult for those outside the faction to acquire land grants. When in York, Rolph would sometimes visit the home of William Warren Baldwin and speak with other reform-minded politicians. In 1824, Rolph ran for the 9th Parliament of Upper Canada to represent Middlesex County. He campaigned on making land deeds easier to obtain, improving public education, and ensuring that all voters were able to participate in the election. Rolph obtained the highest number of votes and was elected as one of the representatives, with John Matthews elected as the other. In the legislature, Rolph aligned with Reform politicians and was considered their leader in the 1820s.
In 1826, Rolph travelled to England to petition the Colonial Office to naturalize American citizens who had moved to Upper Canada, granting them the right to vote and sit in the Canadian provincial legislature. During this trip he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. The British government accepted his petition, and he returned to York in September with guidance on what to include in the legislation to fulfil his request. Rolph proposed a resolution that declared all Americans in Upper Canada to be citizens, legislation that extended citizenship to more Americans than the Colonial Office had intended. Tories delayed passage of the bill until instructions from the Colonial Office arrived and then changed the legislation to support the Office's preferred stipulations, including that Americans had to register with the government before citizenship would be conferred onto them. The amended legislation passed without Rolph's support.
Rolph was re-elected to the legislative assembly in 1828. At the beginning of the legislative session, Rolph introduced a resolution that stated the Parliament did not support the current members of the lieutenant governor's executive council, which passed by a vote of 37 to 1. He served on the Assembly's Committee of Finance, which discovered that Tory politicians and judges were submitting extravagant expenditures. He decided not to run in the 1830 Upper Canada election.
Return to medicine In 1828, Judge John Walpole Willis ruled that the court of Upper Canada could not determine cases unless all the judges were present. Willis's ruling nullified most of the court's decisions since its establishment in 1794. Judge Levius Peters Sherwood continued to hold hearings and did not express his opinion on Wallis's ruling. Rolph and other lawyers submitted a request to the court for Sherwood to state his opinion on the ruling. When Sherwood refused, Rolph protested in the courtroom by taking off his lawyer's gown. Concerned that this protest would cause judges to become biased against him, Rolph refused new clients. He sold his law practice to his brother George in 1832 and focused on his medical career.
Rolph was licensed to practise medicine in Upper Canada in 1829, although he was practising medicine in the province throughout the 1820s. In 1831, Rolph moved to York to expand his medical practice and incorporate patients in York's hospital into a teaching institution. He was appointed to a medical board upon York's 1831 cholera outbreak. The board appointed Rolph as chairman of a committee to find a place to house patients with serious cases of the disease. In 1832, he opened the only medical school operating in Upper Canada at that time.
Municipal politics At the beginning of 1833, Rolph was appointed to a committee to examine the incorporation of York to become the city of Toronto. Later that year, he was appointed to a subcommittee that established the boundaries of the city and the five wards that would elect the councillors and aldermen to Toronto's city council. In Toronto's first city council election in 1834, Rolph declined to run on the Reform slate and was endorsed by the Tories to be elected in St. Patrick's ward; the Tories hoped that other Reformers on the council would select Rolph over William Lyon Mackenzie to be the city's first mayor. He was elected as an alderman and councillor for the ward and ran to be Toronto's first mayor, but lost to Mackenzie because the Reform majority on the council wanted Mackenzie to be honoured as the city's first mayor. Rolph resigned from the council after his defeat. In 1834, he married Grace Haines; they had three sons and a daughter. Prior to the 1834 cholera outbreak, Rolph was appointed as a doctor to the reestablished Cholera Hospital. When Toronto declared the outbreak, Rolph was appointed to the board of the Cholera Hospital.
Return to provincial politics
Francis Bond Head, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, wanted to include moderate reformers on his first Executive Council of Upper Canada. He asked Robert Baldwin to join the council, but Baldwin declined the invitation because he wanted the council's Tory members to be dismissed. Head then invited Rolph for an appointment, as Rolph was also seen as a moderate reformer. Rolph convinced Baldwin and John Henry Dunn to join him on the council. They were appointed as councillors on 20 February 1836. Head made decisions without consulting the council. This led the public to believe the council supported Head's decisions. Rolph led a campaign to have the council support a memorandum that would give more powers and oversight of administration to them. The memorandum was presented to Head on 4 March. Head rejected the memorandum and the entire council resigned on 12 March.