INSIDE the porch of Chorley Cottage is a plaster plaque bearing the legend: RFE 1882.

The date is when the house in Langholm Crescent was built; the initials still elude Echo Memories.

The building's first occupant was Dr John Rimington Fothergill. Born in 1825, he was the youngest son of John Fothergill, a leading advocate of temperance who in 1862 had a large drinking fountain erected in Bondgate in his memory. The fountain is now in South Park beside the aviary.

Dr Fothergill took his father's practice to Semmercote, in Stanhope Road, and became one of Darlington's leading surgeons. When he retired from general practice, he moved from Semmercote to Chorley Cottage and became an honorary surgeon at Darlington Hospital in Russell Street. A Liberal and a Quaker, he died on December 13, 1915, in Chorley Cottage aged 90.

The Fothergill family was deeply medical. Two of Dr Fothergill's brothers, William and Alexander, were dentists. When they put up a brass plaque in the 1870s outside their practice in Northgate saying "surgical dentists", the townspeople were puzzled because until then teeth had only been removed by a piece of string and a slamming door.

William's son, John Alexander, trained as a dentist in Philadelphia and moved the family practice to Raydaleside in Stanhope Road, opposite his uncle in Chorley Cottage.

John Alexander, though, was a worrier. In 1901, he and his brother William Samuel, a bank cashier in Redcar, had a week in Wooler so John could escape the pressures of Raydaleside. It worked. But by 1905 John was suffering again. "He was somewhat depressed and had the delusion that he couldn't do his work," William told an inquest at the Unicorn Inn, Bowes.

John was also worrying about his wife's health. The brothers took a break at Bowes, staying at Walton's Temperance Hotel - they were, of course, grandsons of the man in whose honour the temperance fountain was built.

John took a sleeping draught and some calomel to help him nod off.

Next morning, William was so concerned, he summoned a doctor from Barnard Castle. "I don't think it is of much use; a doctor wouldn't do me any good," John told William.

"He had a wild and haunted look about his face," William told the inquest.

John sent William over the road to the Unicorn for a little medicinal brandy. William was gone for 15 minutes.

"When he returned, he found his brother leaning over the bed with his throat cut and blood rushing out, quite unconscious and faintly gasping," reported the Darlington and Stockton Times. "Deceased was in the habit of shaving himself but witness had not seen a razor about that morning."

Inspector Gatenby of Greta Bridge found papers with "indistinct writing on" under the pillow. One was addressed to William. "Don't blame yourself; you've done all you could," it said.

The jury decided that John Alexander Fothergill, 55, of Raydaleside, Stanhope Road, Darlington, had committed suicide while temporarily insane.

In a 67-word will, he left Raydaleside, worth £12,805, and personal belongings worth £8,982, to his wife. They had four children, aged 14, 13, eight, and 15 months.

John's partner Frank Hamilton continued as a dentist in Raydaleside until Chesterfield was built when he moved into its Majoribanks wing