Moreover, a contested election for the Borough in 1774 had brought with it its familiar temptations to protracted debauch--and it is significant that in 1775 he vacated the office of churchwarden that he had held for many years.

George, to whom his father was not as a rule unkind, did not shrink from once more assisting him among the butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay.

Poetry seems to have been for a while laid aside, the failure of his first venture having perhaps discouraged him.

Some slight amount of practice in his profession fell to his share.
An entry in the Minute Book of the Aldeburgh Board of Guardians of September 17, 1775, orders "that Mr.George Crabbe, Junr., shall be employed to cure the boy Howard of the itch, and that whenever any of the poor shall have occasion for a surgeon, the overseers shall apply to him for that purpose." But these very opportunities perhaps only served to show George Crabbe how poorly he was equipped for his calling as surgeon, and after a period not specified means were found for sending him to London, where he lodged with a family from Aldeburgh who were in business in Whitechapel.

How and where he then obtained instruction or practice in his calling does not appear, though there is a gruesome story, recorded by his son, how a baby-subject for dissection was one day found in his cupboard by his landlady, who was hardly to be persuaded that it was not a lately lost infant of her own.