Timothie Bright

Timothie Bright (about 1551 to 1615) was an English physician and clergyman, remembered as the inventor of modern shorthand. Born near Sheffield, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1561 at the age of eleven and took his bachelor's degree in 1567 to 1568. In 1572 he was in Paris, probably studying medicine, and narrowly escaped the St Bartholomew's Day massacre by taking refuge in the house of Francis Walsingham. He took his medical bachelor's degree at Cambridge in 1574, was licensed to practise the next year and became a doctor of medicine in 1579. He lived at Cambridge and then at Ipswich, witnessed the statutes of Emmanuel College in 1585 and, about 1586, succeeded Dr Turner as physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, resigning by 1590. He dedicated his Treatise on Melancholy to Peter Osborne, Keeper of the Privy Purse, in 1586.