Gray’s Improved Artificial Leg

History

Frederick Gray was an apprentice of James Potts, designer of arguably the first modern artificial leg, the Anglesey Leg, which Potts created for Henry William Paget, Lord Uxbridge. Following Potts’s death, Gray started his own prosthesis business and became one of the leading makers in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Gray lamented the fact that the devices he created would be most useful to injured members of the working classes who couldn’t afford them. For more on Gray and his devices, see Ryan Sweet’s free 2022 book Prosthetic Body Parts in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture.