Later Life
Fuller was a supporter and sponsor of the Royal Institution in London. He acted as mentor and supporter of the young Michael Faraday. In 1818 he loaned the Institution £1000 (about £100,000 in today's value) and later wrote off this debt. In 1828 he established the Fuller medal of the Royal Institution and in early 1833 he founded the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry to which Michael Faraday was appointed as the first professor. Later he also endowed the institution with the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology.
In 1818, Fuller built the Observatory at Brightling which had been designed by Robert Smirke, and in 1822, he endowed Eastbourne in Sussex with its first lifeboat. In 1828, he financed the building of the Belle Tout lighthouse, on the cliff at Beachy Head, near Eastbourne. The first Belle Tout lighthouse was a temporary wooden structure that started service on 1 October 1828. The construction of the permanent granite lighthouse began in 1829 and it became operational on 11 October 1834. On Thursday, 18 September 1828, Jack Fuller bought Bodiam Castle for 3000 guineas at auction to save it from destruction.
On the afternoon of Friday, 11 April 1834, Fuller died at his home, 36 Devonshire Place, London. He was buried under the Pyramid in Brightling churchyard. The main beneficiaries of his will were his nephew, Peregrine Palmer Fuller Palmer Acland (1789–1871)and General Sir Augustus Elliot Fuller(1777–1857) who was John Fuller's first cousin once removed.
Read more about this topic: John 'Mad Jack' Fuller
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A moment that gave not only itself, but
Also the means of keeping it, of not turning to dust
Or gestures somewhere up ahead
But of becoming complicated like the torrent
In new dark passages, tears and laughter which
Are a sign of life, of distant life in this case.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)