Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Thomas SCATTERGOOD
Thomas Scattergood, the founding father of Friends Hospital Asylum for the Insane in Philadelphia, was a tanner by profession and a minister by compulsion. In his youth, Scattergood was fond of sailing and had spent every spare moment, even Meeting days, with friends on the Delaware River. But a day came when he realized the "enormity of his sin" and, partially to atone for this and other sins, he became a minister in 1781 at the age of 33. Even among his contemporaries he was known as a "mournful prophet." Numerous accounts, including his own, describe Scattergood as being "in deaths oft," "brought very low", and drinking "of that bitter cup which was drunk in its fullness by his lord and Savior." After his death his Monthly Meeting said of him that "being sensible of his various infirmities, he was frequently in inward retirement." Thomas Scattergood was not a happy man. As he traveled throughout the country, his depression only rarely lifting, he would often say to the meetings he visited that "the sound of the distress which is coming upon you is in my ears, and I cannot leave you until it has fulfilled its commission, spent its fury and passed by." But the calamity never came and in 1794 he asked for permission to visit Europe, where he remained for the next six years.
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