Physician, writer. M.B. King's College, London, 1842; M.D. University of London, 1844. M.R.C.S. 1842. On completion of his medical training, settled in Liverpool; there, was lecturer to Royal Infirmary School of Medicine; house surgeon, then physician, to Royal Infirmary; attached also to Fever Hospital and Workhouse Infirmary. Retired from practice, 1871. Published works on medicine and hygiene. Contributed to Proceedings of Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. Read widely. Came to hold idea that phallic worship was key to all mythology. Propounded the idea in various papers and in Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, 1868-1869; Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, 1869; Ancient Faiths and Modern, 1876.

"Six Years among Cannibals" is an account of Marquesan customs, related—in response to his physician's questioning—by a hospital patient who had been shipwrecked on one of the Marquesas Islands. The writer begins his article with the statement: "I am physician to a hospital in a large seaport town". Of the three Inmans listed in medical directories of the 1850s, only Thomas Inman was a hospital physician in a seaport town. The article shows the writer's knowledge of and interest in taboo, initiation rites, language, names, etc., among savage peoples knowledge and interests that accord with those of Thomas lnman.

Of the H.W. staff, it was Morley who was acquainted with Inman. The two had been fellow students at King's College; Inman had contributed to the King's College Magazine, of which Morley was one of the founders. In Early Papers and Some Memories (p. 16), Morley mentioned Inman's later becoming known "as a writer upon matters of curious learning".

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography