Dr John King (1766-1846) John King came from Berne (where he was born as Johann Koenig) to work as an engraver in London in the early 1790s, and according to his nephew Thomas Lovell Beddoes: 'This failed, and ... he took to surgery and came to Bristol, in the democratic dawn of Southey, Coleridge, etc. To the former he was closely attached, corresponded and hexameterized with him [and] made acquaintance with Davy, the opium-eater [Thomas De Quincey], my father [Dr Thomas Beddoes], and all that was then'. King had arrived in Bristol by 1799. He worked with the pioneering chemists, Thomas Beddoes and Humphry Davy, and practised as a surgeon in the city for most of his life. He married Emmeline Edgeworth, the sister of the novelist Maria. He was a scholar, radical thinker, close friend of Bird, took part in the sketching group as an amateur, and was a regular correspondent of Gibbons, the ironmaster and patron of Danby. Later in life he wrote extensive reviews of painting exhibitions in Bristol. He should not be confused with the portrait and religious painter John King (1788-1847) who was born and died in Dartmouth, Devon, but lived in Bristol in the 1820s and 1830s.