Usefulness
I know nothing of the surgeon Thomas Prickett beyond what is recorded on this plaque in a thirteenth-century church on the Isle of Wight. But what is stated there is enough.
I’d say one can be counted blessed who is remembered as having lived ‘a life of extensive usefulness’ to others. Indeed we could do with a revival, Europewide, of aspirations to public service. Mr Prickett not only lived well. He also died well, ‘with piety and resignation’. And this he learnt to do in no more than thirty years of existence.
He must have been a good man. May he rest in peace.
