William Newnham (1790-1865), medical practitioner at Farnham, Surrey, "in practice before 1815". Oil painting by James Andrews, 1856.

Newnham was a surgeon-apothecary, the profession which was the forerunner of the general practitioner. Moreover, he was an example of an English surgeon-apothecary who was in medical practice before 1815 and was therefore exempt from the requirements of the 1815 Apothecaries Act: that controversial Act obliged all newly qualified surgeon-apothecaries to be licensed by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. Newnham practised medicine in Farnham, Surrey, for sixteen years before obtaining a licence. He later became a strong supporter of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (from 1855 the British Medical Association) and in particular its Benevolent Fund for the relief of distressed medical men and their families. The present portrait was commissioned in 1856 by subscribers to the fund on Newnham's retirement in 1857. Insofar as he had a specialism, it was obstetrics and gynaecology, but he also wrote on green tea and phrenology, and contributed fifteen long letters in favour of mesmerism to the Association's journal