Dramatis Personae—Candidates
From Faculty of Medicine Online Museum and Archive
(New page: == The Candidates Who Received Degrees by Examination before 1888 == == Charles Field Goldsbro’ (1828–1883) == MD Syd. MRCS FRCPEd LSA MB (1866) MD (1868) Charles Field Goldsbro’ ...)
Newer edit →
Revision as of 02:56, 13 February 2009
The Candidates Who Received Degrees by Examination before 1888
Charles Field Goldsbro’ (1828–1883)
MD Syd. MRCS FRCPEd LSA MB (1866) MD (1868)
Charles Field Goldsbro’ was the first person ever to receive the degrees of MB and MD at Sydney University but, interestingly, he never worked in Australia. He was born in North Wales in Welshpool, in 1828 and first studied medicine in London, where he obtained his licences (MRCS and LSA) in 1856. He worked for a time as House Surgeon at the Charing Cross Hospital and held a post as Assistant Medical Officer to the General Post Office, London. At that time he lived in Southwark with his brother, Thomas John Goldsbro’, who was also a practitioner. He left London to study medicine and surgery in Paris and then went to Edinburgh where he obtained his LRCPEd by examination on 20 April 1860.
Still restless he took a post as ship’s surgeon in the Rob Roy and came to Auckland, New Zealand, in 1860. (In the New Zealand Government Gazette he is given as having been registered in Auckland on 1 January 1859, which suggests an earlier visit to New Zealand in 1858, but I have no other evidence of this.) There he seems to have developed a good practice at Parnell and in time obtained a number of official appointments: Coroner of the Gaol, Asylum, and Hospital in the district of Auckland, Senior Surgeon of the Auckland Militia and Volunteers (winning a War Medal in the 1863 Waikato Campaign in the Maori Wars), Physician to the Parnell Orphans’ Home, President of the Pension Board, Medical Superintendent of Lock Hospital, and Acting Medical Superintendent of the District Hospital. He was also President of the Auckland Medical Society and was a very active Freemason in the Waitemata and Remuera Lodges between 1862 and 1870.
This record betokens an ambitious man. Since the Dunedin Medical School did not confer its first degree until 1887, Goldsbro’ had to look further afield to improve his qualifications. In 1868 he came to Sydney and was accepted as a candidate for the MB examination under the newly promulgated ‘ten-year rule’, under which practitioners with appropriate licences could be examined for the MB degree without having matriculated and obtained a BA, provided they had been in bona fide practice for ten years. Goldsbro’ passed this examination and presumably returned to New Zealand at once, since his official posts and Masonic Lodge appointments continue unbroken at this time. In 1868 he again returned to Sydney and was examined for the MD degree, the examination consisting only of the submission and defence of a thesis. By good fortune, after submitting his thesis, Goldsbro’ applied to the Senate for permission to leave Sydney in order to return to Auckland, and, in the event that he should be successful in his examination, to be allowed to graduate in absentia. This, Senate agreed to, and in due course, he was admitted to the MD degree (1870). Graduating in absentia, however, Goldsbro’ did not retrieve his thesis (in those days there was no requirement that the thesis be lodged in the library) and it is to be seen, today, in the rare book collection at Sydney University. It consists of sixteen hand-written foolscap pages, once folded to fit a long ‘legal’ envelope, and is entitled The Climate of New Zealand and its Relation to Phthisis and Struma. It begins with a statement of what was to be concluded:
Much has been written that would lead the unwary to suppose that phthisical patients — however far the disease might have advanced, have only to emigrate to New Zealand to ensure decided improvement, if not complete cure — I regret I cannot concur in this opinion.
Today, of course, it would not be acceptable even as a term essay for undergraduates but, in contrast to the efforts of the latter, it is literate, clearly written and logically argued. Goldsbro’ was not a medical scientist, but was evidently a well educated man and a sound practitioner.
Subsequently, Goldsbro’ submitted testimonials and evidence of his Sydney MD to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and obtained his MRCPEd by ballot on 1 February 1876. This led to award of his FRCPEd also by ballot on 5 February 1878. He continued his practice in Auckland but at the comparatively early age of fifty-five he developed ‘dropsy’ and, according to the New Zealand Herald, ‘had been greatly prostrated by the medical operations which he had undergone for his complaint’. He died in the evening on Thursday 20 December 1883 and was buried at Parnell.
I have dealt at length with Goldsbro’, since he was our first graduate, both for the MB and the MD. His career is typical of most of our early graduates and his motives for seeking such a degree fit a pattern to which most of the rest conform.
Goldsbro’, from his portrait, was a remarkably impressive looking man, very much a pillar of the community and the epitome of protestant middle class respectability. It was inevitable that such practitioners would seek degrees when they became available and, doubtless, had the reform of medical training not changed things radically, in due course he could have been expected to train apprentices to follow in his footsteps. The opening of Medical Schools in Melbourne, Dunedin, Sydney and Adelaide between 1860 and 1887 altered all this forever.
New Zealand Herald (1883). 21 December. Cyclopaedia of New Zealand (1902). Vol. 2, Auckland. Archives of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, London. Archives of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. Goldsbro’, C. F. (1870). MD Thesis, University of Sydney Library. New Zealand Medical Directory (1875). New Zealand Medical Register (1880). Bruck, Ludwig (1883). The Australasian Medical Directory and Hand Book. Australasian Medical Gazette, Sydney.
Patrick Smith (1837–1900)
MA Aberd. MD Syd. MB (1867) MD (1870)
Patrick Smith was the first of six Victorian practitioners to obtain the Sydney degrees. He appears to have been born in 1837 in Insch, Aberdeenshire, the son of William Smith, a farmer and was educated at Marischal College where he obtained the Scottish AM degree in 18611. We do not know where or when he studied medicine but he must have gained his licences to practise before 1867 since such licences would have been a prerequisite for his registration in Victoria and for his acceptance for examination at Sydney University. We first find record of him in Australia in early 1867, the same year in which he took his Sydney MB, when he was living and practising at Learmouth; later in that year he got an appointment as House Surgeon at the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum. He seems to have intended settling there, since he married at Learmouth in 1868. Ambition evidently drove him to sit for the Sydney MB examination, to which he was admitted on the basis of his MA and, presumably, his licences; he failed in his first attempt at the examination but passed a few months later and returned to obtain the MD in 1870.
In Melbourne he was very active in the Medical Society of Victoria (M.S.V.) which he first joined in 1868 and notes about his activities appeared frequently in the pages of the Australian Medical Journal between 1867 and 1875; he also published occasional short pieces in that journal. He held various minor appointments in the M.S.V. including that of Librarian (1876) and Auditor (1875) but, although a candidate for the offices of Secretary and Vice-President of that Society, he seems not to have been elected. He became Medical Officer at the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum in 1872 and held an honorary appointment at the Melbourne Hospital in 1875.
Whether simply from restlessness, or because he failed to break into the medical establishment of Melbourne, we cannot tell, but in 1877 he left Melbourne for Queensland, where he remained for the rest of his life. There he became a Justice of the Peace and, at various times, occupied Government medical posts. On 20 July 1877 he was appointed Superintendent of the Woogaru Lunatic Asylum, located near Woogaru Creek, a small tributary of the Brisbane River running between Ipswich and Brisbane. At that time access to the asylum was by river. The Hospital, for many years known as the Goodna Mental Asylum but now called Wolston Park, was and remains the major mental hospital for Queensland. Smith, who had a local reputation as an efficient and caring Superintendent left this post sometime in 1883 to make a trip to Britain and it is presumed that he was appointed to his next post on his return in 1885 when he became Superintendent of the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, a post he retained until his death. It was a hospital for the aged and infirm with an associated leprosarium, and was located at a remote site on Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay. (Dunwich will be well known to medical graduates of Queensland University since it is now the site of a marine biology station to which all medical students used once to make excursions during their first year.) Before making his trip back to Britain he had practised for a time on Wickham Terrace (1883) and held posts as Medical Officer at the Lady Bowen Hospital and Superintendent of the Peel Island Quarantine Station. In 1882 he had become Secretary and Treasurer of the newly revived Queensland Medical Association (first founded in 1871 with Joseph Bancroft as its Secretary), which folded up once more in the following year and was revived yet again only in 1886. He himself had resigned as an office bearer of the association on 14 March 1883 giving as his reason his planned trip to Britain. He died at Dunwich on 9 December 1900 and is buried on Stradbroke Island. His headstone, which is in good condition, records the family name, Jardine, of his two wives — presumably they were sisters. Smith’s is a varied but strangely unsatisfactory career. Restless, he seems never to have persevered long enough at one post to make a real success of it. His Sydney degrees may have helped him get certain governmental and public hospital appointments, and, as was the case with Charles Taylor (q.v.), will probably have assured him of a better salary, but he seems not to have made his mark — even in 1880, Dunwich cannot have been a very attractive appointment2.
Senate Minutes (1867 & 1870). University of Sydney Archives. Australian Medical Journal (1867–1878). Numerous entries. Tovell, A. and Gandevia, B. (1962). Med. J. Aust. I, pp. 756–759. Cameron, Donald (1923). Med. J. Aust. II, pp. 649–658. Aust. Med. Gaz. (1901). p. 41. Bruck, Ludwig (1883). The Australasian Medical Directory and Hand-Book. Australasian Medical Gazette, Sydney. Archives of the University of Aberdeen.
1The records of the birth date, qualifications and graduation date of Patrick Smith are confused. The University of Aberdeen was formed in 1860 by the amalgamation of the two Aberdeen University Colleges, King’s and Marischal. In the Roll of the Graduates 1860–1900 of the University of Aberdeen, compiled by W. Johnston, there is only one Patrick Smith listed as graduating AM in the relevant period. According to this source, he was a student of divinity and died on 7 May 1862 at Insch. However, in the Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae Aberdonensis compiled by P. J. Anderson, there is another entry in the index for a Patrick Smith with the notation that he was an ‘MD Brisbane’. Unfortunately, the page references lead only to the Patrick Smith referred to above as a Divinity student. In addition to these two (or one?) Patrick Smiths, there is a Peter Smith of Rhynie who graduated AM from King’s College in 1860, but nothing more is known about him. There is a Patrick Smith who was licensed at the Apothecaries’ Hall in Dublin (LAH) in 1848, and at the Glasgow Faculty (LFPS) in 1854, whose name appears in the British Medical Directory for 1875, and again for 1881, as living in Greymouth (Nelson), New Zealand. This Smith does not appear to have held a University degree, and the dates of his entry in the Directory make it unlikely that he could be our Patrick Smith. I can find no record of any other P. Smith’s having been licensed at this time by either of the Royal Colleges in Edinburgh. It is interesting to speculate on what was the connection, if any, between Patrick Smith, who was referred to in the Senate minutes and correspondence as Peter Smith until he actually presented in person for his MB examination, and the Peter Smith ‘from Scotland’ who offered his services to Senate in 1863 as a Professor of Anatomy (see entry for Sir Charles Nicholson for details). Both held the Scottish AM degree from Aberdeen yet only one of the three persons named P. Smith, who obtained this degree within the likely time span, is recorded as having a medical degree and he was the one who migrated to Australia in 1867. If we may disregard the divinity student said to have died in 1862, we might feel justified in assuming that it was Peter Smith of Rhynie who offered his services as a Professor of Anatomy except that there is no record of such a person obtaining medical qualifications. Alternatively, the Smith who offered himself for the Anatomy appointment may have been the same person as he who ultimately obtained medical degrees from the University of Sydney. It would not appear out of keeping with Patrick Smith’s character that he should have offered his services to the University as a Professor of Anatomy without having any special qualifications beyond his medical licence(s) to justify his appointment. It may only be coincidence that his Brisbane home was called Rhynie House.
2I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Sir Clarence Leggett who provided me with details of Smith’s career in Queensland.
James Houison (1842–1915)
BA Syd. MB ChM. Edin. MD Syd. MD (1870)
James Houison was born in Parramatta on 2 August 1842, the son of a well-known local architect and builder, also called James, who built St John’s and All Saints’ Churches, the Parramatta Gaol and many other of the stone buildings that used to adorn the town in earlier days. He grew up in the house built by his father which still stands at 64 Macquarie St., Parramatta. He attended The King’s School as a day boy from 1852 to 1860, winning a scholarship whilst there and becoming Dux of School in his penultimate year. Afterwards he enrolled as an Arts undergraduate at Sydney University between 1860 and 1863 when he graduated Bachelor of Arts, the eighth year in which Sydney University had conferred degrees.
While at Sydney University, Houison lived at St Paul’s College (1859–1863) and the archives there show that he entered the University with the intention of reading Arts and Medicine. Evidently he intended pursuing a medical career when he first came up to the University although the only medical subject offered by the University would have been Chemistry. It is quite likely that rumours of the Senate’s plans to open a Medical School were about and that he hoped that he would be able to continue with his medical studies as soon as his BA had been conferred. If so, he was to be sorely disappointed. During his student days Houison was a member of the Parramatta Volunteer Rifle Corps, founded by Richard Greenup (q.v.). Since no local medical school was available, Houison was sent to Edinburgh to study. He attended the University there for four sessions between 1863/4 and 1866/7 and graduated MB ChM in 1867. He appears to have returned home soon after and he applied for the degree of Doctor of Medicine at Sydney University late in 1868. Although he was older than the minimum age of twenty-three years, as stipulated by the Sydney by-laws, he had not held his Bachelor’s degree for the required two years, and Senate informed him on 2 December 1868 that his request was premature but that, ‘at the proper time’ it would be viewed favourably. In fact, he must have been examined before this question had come up, since his name is entered in the roll of graduates immediately after that of Goldsbro’ in 1868. Nevertheless he had to wait until 1870 before Senate let his name appear in the Calendar. His experience must have served as a warning to his parents, since his younger brother, Andrew, who took his BA at Sydney University in 1870, stayed in Edinburgh long enough to obtain both his MB ChM, in 1873, and his MD in the following year — Edinburgh University was evidently more accommodating to precocious students.
For the next few years James Houison practised at Parramatta, at Alfred Square, and acted as Relieving Medical Officer to the Lunatic Asylum when the Superintendent, Charles Taylor (q.v.), another of our early graduates, was away. By 1883, however, he had moved to Grafton and remained there until he retired in about 1895. In Grafton he served as Visiting Medical Officer to the gaol. He died on 8 December 1915, at Parramatta.
James has been rather overshadowed by his more distinguished younger brother Andrew, who was an art collector and amateur Australian archaeologist, and was very well known in Sydney. However, James, who was the first of the four MD graduates who obtained an MB elsewhere (Rowan from Melbourne, Dixson and Ross, like Houison, from Edinburgh) and then applied to be examined for the MD degree at Sydney, illustrates the problem faced by young men wishing to obtain a University education in Sydney and yet become medical practitioners. The Houison brothers, like Arthur Renwick (q.v.), were fortunate that their father could afford to send them to The King’s School, put them through Arts at Sydney and then send them off to Scotland. Others, such as Frederick Milford (q.v.), chose the apprenticeship pathway and never matriculated at a British University, while presumably still others were deterred from trying at all. It is noteworthy that no one from Sydney seems ever to have gone to Melbourne to study Medicine — the rivalry between the sister colonies seems to have existed from the foundation of Melbourne and is still alive. In the words of a current Victorian Beauty Queen, ‘Yes there is rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne has the better climate’(!).
Macarthur Brown, Keith (1936). Medical Practice in Old Parramatta, Angus and Robertson, Sydney. Archives, University of Edinburgh. Senate Minutes, University of Sydney Archives. Aust. Med. Gaz. (1912). p. 235 Town and Country Journal (1912). 28 August, p. 25. Archives of the N.S.W. Registrar General’s Department. Archives of The King’s School, Parramatta. N. L. Houison Jnr., private family papers. Archives of St Paul’s College, University of Sydney.
Frederick Lloyd (1827–1910)
MD Syd. LRCSIrel MB (1870) MD (1872)
Frederick Lloyd was the second of the Victorian practitioners who obtained the Sydney degrees. He was born in Limerick in 1827, the son of a solicitor. He studied for some time at Trinity College, Dublin, but abandoned his career to study medicine instead at the Ledwick Medical School. He obtained his LRCS Ireland in 1852 and set out soon afterwards for Victoria as ship’s surgeon aboard the emigrant ship Jane Pratt. On arrival at Hobson’s Bay in late 1852, the ship’s passengers presented him with a gold watch in appreciation of his services on board ship. He commenced practice in Melbourne almost immediately but had no long-standing public hospital association except that he was on the committee of the Benevolent Asylum in the 1880s.
In 1858 he was appointed a Justice of the Peace in the town of Hotham and was Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates there from 1865 to 1902. In this capacity he became very well-known and evidently specialized in cases involving breaches of the Matrimonial Offences Act. His Irish wit was said to have been a feature of his courtroom appearances. In public life, also, he was a member of the Narracan Shire Council from 1886 and served as its President for two years. At the general elections of 1877 and 1880 he stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a constitutional and free-trade candidate in the electorates of South Gippsland and North Melbourne.
Lloyd remained active in medical affairs throughout his life. In 1868 the ship Avondale brought a disease to Australia categorized merely as chicken pox by the Government authorities. However, Lloyd pronounced it to be smallpox and, when subsequent events proved him right, he was active in stamping out what had become a serious epidemic. In the same year he became embroiled in a quarrel involving the appointment of a Government Pathologist, which saw him ranged in violent opposition to the Medical Society of Victoria (M.S.V.), of which he had earlier been Treasurer, the University Medical School, and the City Coroner. The details, well recounted in Professor Russell’s book on the history of the Melbourne Medical School, need not concern us here, but the upshot was the formation of the Victorian Medical Association (V.M.A.) in rivalry to the rather exclusive Medical Society of Victoria. The V.M.A., with Cornelius Stewart (q.v.), another Sydney MD, as its President, founded the Australian Medical Gazette and appointed Lloyd as editor. The Gazette, which survived only for three years, aimed to be a general practitioners’ journal and mounted several attacks on the M.S.V. and its journal, the Australian Medical Journal. Its failure after three years is not easy to explain but it is probably related to the sudden death of the V.M.A. President, Cornelius Stewart in early 1872. During its period of publication, it must have been a source of considerable irritation to the Victorian medical establishment. The Gazette has nothing to do with one of similar name, the Australasian Medical Gazette, a successor to the N.S.W. Medical Gazette, which was founded in 1881 as the official organ of the N.S.W. branch of the British Medical Association. The quarrel with the Melbourne medical establishment, including Professor Halford, the first Professor of the Medical School there, will certainly have ensured that Lloyd, when seeking to obtain a University degree, chose Sydney University. Since he had been at Trinity College, Dublin, he surely could have matriculated at Melbourne (obligatory after 1863), but doubtless was apprehensive about the medical examination that he would have to take. It is also not clear what status would have been accorded his Irish LRCS which was quite acceptable at Sydney. Consequently we find him presenting at Sydney in 1870 for the MB examination and, having passed the MB, again in 1872 to defend his MD thesis on the topic of Acute Dysentery. Lloyd clearly did not need the degrees for his practice, nor for his public life, but doubtless they helped to improve his stature as an opponent of the M.S.V. As editor of the Gazette he may well have felt that possession of a University degree was desirable although, in fact, the journal ceased to appear before he received his MD. His standing in the community clearly improved during these years and in 1872, the year he got his MD, he was appointed by the Governor to a Commission of Inquiry into the causes, prevention and treatment of diphtheria.
Lloyd died on 27 January 1910 and is buried in the Anglican section of the Melbourne General Cemetery. His reasons for seeking a Sydney degree seem clear enough and the advantages he must have hoped for seem to have been realized.
Aust. Med. Gaz. (1910). Vol. 29, pp. 104–105. Cyclopaedia of Victoria (1903). Vol. 1, p. 457. Humphreys, H. M. (1883). Men of the Time in Australia, Victorian Series, 2nd edition, pp. 167–168. Gandevia, Bryan (1952). Med. J. Aust. II, pp. 184–191. Lloyd, Frederick (editor) (1869–1871). Australian Medical Gazette, Medical Society of Victoria, Melbourne. Russell, K. F. (1977). The Melbourne Medical School 1862–1962. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.
Cornelius Stewart (circa 1824–1872)
MD Syd. LFPSGlas MB (1870) MD (1872)
Cornelius Stewart, a Victorian practitioner, was closely connected with Frederick Lloyd and took his Sydney degrees in the same years. He was born in Dunblane, Perthshire, around 1824, the son of a surgeon of the same name. He studied medicine in Glasgow at the Portland Street Medical School, and became a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (LFPSGlas) in 1848. He must have come to Australia soon after and practised in Richmond where, in 1868, he became Chairman of the Richmond Free Dispensary. He was one of the rebel practitioners involved in the quarrel with the Medical Society of Victoria and, when the Victorian Medical Association was formed in 1869 on 8 January, he became its first President. He was very active in local politics and was Mayor of the City of Richmond in 1867–1868. Perhaps because of his high office in the V.M.A, he was appointed to the Medical Board of Victoria in 1869. With Frederick Lloyd he founded the Australian Medical Gazette and published several short pieces in it in the ensuing three years. Like Lloyd he was examined for the MB degree at the University of Sydney in 1870 and, after receiving the degree, was awarded the MD degree two years later. He died suddenly on 17 February 1872 and, perhaps because of this, the V.M.A. ceased to exist and the December 1871 issue of the Australian Medical Gazette was the last. We know surprisingly little about him, doubtless owing to his early death. It seems likely that he, George Moore and Frederick Lloyd decided together to seek Sydney degrees for essentially the same reasons. Death prevented Stewart from capitalizing on his action.
That he was not universally popular is revealed by a comment in the Argus a few days after his death: The death of Dr Stewart of Richmond, which took place on Saturday last, creates a vacancy in the Medical Board of Victoria. It is to be hoped that the Government will act somewhat more with discernment than was shown on the last two occasions of filling up vacancies in this body. Thus, not only was his appointment of the previous year deprecated but even the social conventions requiring expression of regret at his death, were omitted. One presumes that the comment emanated from a member of the Medical Society of Victoria.
Lloyd, Frederick (editor) (1869–1871). Australian Medical Gazette. Tovell, A. and Gandevia, B. (1962). Med. J. Aust. I, pp. 756–759. Argus (1872). 23 February.
George Moore (circa 1824–1915)
MD Syd. MRCS MB (1870) MD (1872)
George Moore is the third of the group of Victorian practitioners who sought degrees at Sydney in 1870. He came from Enniskillen near Lake Erne in Ulster and was licensed to practise by the Royal College of Surgeons of England (MRCS) in 1850. He evidently came to Australia following the discovery of gold in 1851 and we first hear of him practising at Mt Korong in June 1852, but he was first registered as a legally qualified medical practitioner only in May 1854. He seems to have remained in the gold fields near Bendigo until the late 1850s and was licensed as a liquor trader at Tarrengower (1854), Castlemaine (1859) and Freyerstown (1859). As the gold fever abated, he showed less interest in gold and liquor and began to pursue medicine more vigorously. He was appointed to the surgical staff of the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in 1857 and was on the committee of management of the Medical Society of Victoria from 1859. From 1857 until 1880 there is frequent mention of him in the Australian Medical Journal but, with the foundation of the Victorian Medical Association (V.M.A.) he appears to have joined forces with Stewart and Lloyd, albeit without severing all connection with the establishment group. He was Vice-President of the V.M.A. in 1869 and President in 1871. Like Lloyd and Stewart he obtained his MB at Sydney in 1870 and his MD in 1872. He practised at Hotham near Melbourne (where Lloyd was Chief Magistrate) from about 1860 onwards. He died on 28 March 1915 and was buried at Brighton. He appears to have left no further record to indicate that he gained much from the award of his University degrees except, of course, the title of Doctor.
Judging from his obituary in the Argus, Moore was very well known and active in business, particularly mining. He was a director of many of the company flotations in the Mount Lyell boom. He was on the original board of the North Mount Lyell Company and numerous others including the King Conrad mine in N.S.W. He also had considerable holdings in the Korumburra Coal Company of which he served for a time as Chairman. In his obituary in the Argus he is described rather cryptically as ‘having been well known at the shareholders’ meetings of the National Bank of Australasia for years.’1
Australian Medical Journal, Numerous references from 1857 to 1880 Bowden, K. M. (1974). Doctors and Diggers on the Mt Alexander Goldfields, p. 205. Bowden, Melbourne. Argus (1915). 1 April.
1I am grateful to Dr Harold Love and Ms Theresa Battaglia of Monash University for their assistance.
Richard (Theophilus) Jones (1839–1914)
MD Syd. LRCPEd LFPSGlas LMidRCPEd. MB (1870) MD (1874)
Theophilus Jones was born on 7 May 1839 at Aberayron in Cardiganshire, South Wales; although his ancestry was predominantly Welsh, his mother was from London and he spoke English as well as he did Welsh. After being educated at Carnarvon College, he went to Durham University to study medicine. Financial difficulties forced discontinuation of his studies before graduation but he was able in September 1862 to gain a post as a ship’s surgeon in the Great Victoria, a combined steam and sailing ship carrying emigrants from Liverpool to Melbourne.
In Victoria, Jones spent time on the gold fields, but he returned to Britain and resumed his medical studies at Glasgow and Edinburgh in October 1868. His most eminent teacher was Lister, who later, of course, taught Anderson Stuart and many others of Sydney’s early medical teachers. Jones (who had arbitrarily assumed the name Theophilus the more readily to distinguish himself from countless other Jones’s) graduated with the joint diplomas of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (LRCPEd and LMidRCPEd) and the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (LFPSGlas) in 1869. He sailed once again for Australia in December 1869, this time as ship’s surgeon in another emigrant ship, the Jessie Readman bound for Dunedin. From Dunedin, where he arrived in March 1870, he sailed for Sydney, intending to join his brother in Queensland. While passing through Sydney he applied for and was granted an MB degree after examination at the University of Sydney. Senate seems to have bent its rules somewhat since he did not hold a BA degree from any University nor by any stretch of the imagination could he be said to have been in bona fide practice for ten years — even if we count from the time he first embarked for Victoria in the Great Victoria he could only have been in practice for eight years, at least one year of which was spent as a student in Glasgow. It may be that he was eligible to have received the MB ChM of Glasgow University (his family believed that he actually held them) but he did not obtain such degrees, and even had he done so, there was no provision to admit such a person ad eundem gradum until 1881. Nevertheless he had the degree conferred on him in May 1870, and proceeded on to Queensland to join his brother, James (Aberdeen) Jones who was in practice in Dalby. Richard practised for a time at Gayndah and had an appointment at the local hospital. While there he became a Justice of the Peace.
After only a short time both brothers moved to New South Wales. Aberdeen Jones set up in Balmain and Theophilus Jones at Richmond. From Richmond, Jones moved to Ashfield in 1873 and, having married Lydia Sophia Hinder, the daughter of Captain Edward Hinder, in 1878, he built a house in Ashfield (Calder Idris), where he remained for the rest of his long life. In 1874, some time after moving from Queensland to Sydney, he submitted a thesis to the University (topic unknown) and received the MD degree. Jones’s practice flourished and at his death his family was left very comfortably off. His wife’s brother was Henry Critchley Hinder (q.v.), a graduate from the 1885 intake at the new Medical School (Table 3.1) who became a very prominent surgeon in Sydney. Theophilus Jones, who was founder of the Western Suburbs Cottage Hospital, retired in 1905 in favour of his son-in-law, George Bowen Thomas, and died at Calder Idris in Liverpool Rd., Ashfield on 4 March 1914.
Jones is the least typical of our early graduates. When he was first in Victoria in 1862, if he knew of the Sydney Faculty of Medicine, he would have known that he could not possibly have satisfied its requirements for admission to the MB examination. It may be that his brother knew of the later relaxation of the by-laws that introduced the ten-year rule but, even so, Richard can hardly have felt confident that Senate would prove so flexible about this by-law as in fact proved to be the case. It would be pleasing to be able to conclude that the award of these degrees had materially advanced his career but, in fact, his brother, James Aberdeen Jones, who never bothered to obtain University degrees (he was LRCSEd 1859, LRCPEd 1869), had an even more successful career in fashionable Balmain and became a prominent figure in Sydney society.
Aust. Med. Gaz. (1914). p. 240. Biographical Note No. 29, Sydney University Archives. Biographical Note, Royal Australasian College of Physicians Library. Richard Theophilus Jones, M.D. A Reminiscence by his Youngest Daughter, unpublished manuscript, Royal Australasian College of Physicians Library. Extracts from Richard Jones’s diary of the voyage of SS Great Victoria, unpublished manuscript, Royal Australasian College of Physicians Library.
James Barrett (1835–1908)
MD Syd. MRCS LSA LMidRCS MB (1871) MD (1873)
James Barrett, the fifth Victorian practitioner to seek a Sydney degree, was born in Banbury near Oxford in 1835. He left school to become a bank clerk but in 1849, aged fourteen, he changed plans and became apprenticed to William Thomas Douglass, a surgeon-apothecary of Banbury (the MRCS-LSA combination was quite common by the mid-19th century). After serving his term he studied at the Middlesex Medical School, obtaining his licences in 1858 (MRCS, LSA, LMidRCS). He worked during this time as a Resident Medical Officer at the Middlesex Hospital. Shortly after getting his licences he came to Melbourne in the usual way — as ship’s surgeon in an emigrant ship — and took an appointment in Melbourne as an Assistant Surgeon at the Lying-in-Hospital. During the next two years, in collaboration with two seniors, Tracy and Turnbull, he published several case reports in the Australian Medical Journal but then appears to have entered general practice at Emerald Hill, where he remained for the rest of his life. In 1870 he was appointed Physician to the newly formed Alfred Hospital. He was a Justice of the Peace. Barrett received his MB degree from Sydney University in 1871 and his MD (thesis topic unknown) in 1873. According to an anonymous biographical note in the Archives of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Medical Association, he applied to Sydney ‘as Melbourne University would not admit people holding his qualifications to examination’. This is possible, since the MRCS-LSA combination could be considered deficient in Medicine as distinct from Surgery, but, in any case, having left school aged twelve and not having studied for a Licence of the College of Physicians, it is unlikely that Barrett had any Latin (or Greek) and so could not possibly have hoped to matriculate at Melbourne, a prerequisite before he could have been examined. The Sydney ten-year rule averted this problem. Barrett, who became one of the most respected and successful general practitioners of Melbourne, died at South Melbourne on 15 January 1908. He had a large family and three sons and one daughter became practitioners. Sir James Barrett, a well-known ophthalmologist and man of public affairs in Victoria, was his eldest son.
Aust. Med. Gaz. (1908). p. 93. Intercol. Med. J. (1908). p. 63. The Australasian (1908). 18 January, p. 157. Biographical note in Archives of Victorian Branch of A.M.A. A.D.B., Vol. 7, pp. 186–189.
The Rev. William French Clay (1821–1889)
MA Cantab. MD Syd. MRCS MB (1871) MD (1874)
The Rev. William French Clay was born on 16 December 1821, in Birmingham, the son of a clerk. He was educated at King Edward VI’s Grammar School at Birmingham and entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, as a sizar, but he did not proceed to a degree. He then trained as a surgeon, obtaining his MRCS in 1846, and was employed in that capacity in the Honourable East India Company Army, where he saw action in the Sikh War (1848–1849). After some years, Clay resigned his post, returned to Cambridge and graduated BA in 1858 (MA in 1865). He was ordained priest by the Bishop of Sodor and Man in May 1859, having served a curacy on the Isle of Man in 1858. Clay worked as secretary to the Church Missionary Society (1861–1868) and took up a number of chaplaincies. Eventually he came to Bathurst in 1869, perhaps persuaded by an Australian friend, Samuel Edward Marsden (grandson of the more famous colonial priest, Samuel Marsden), who had become Bishop at Bathurst. In 1873 Clay moved to Sydney, where he worked at St Leonards. There, however, he came into conflict with his Bishop, although both were strong supporters of the Evangelical Party, over the question of state aid to schools.
Clay appears to have been toying with the notion of resuming medical practice for some time as he applied for examination for the MB degree and received it in 1871. As a Cambridge MA he would not have needed to avail himself of the ten-year rule although in fact his Indian service would probably have sufficed for this purpose. He obtained his Sydney MD in 1874. Perhaps he saw the University examination as a way of resuming his medical connections — conceivably, since he had only a surgical licence, he may have felt the need of a ‘medical’ qualification although this would not have been necessary for him to practise or to be registered by the Medical Board. Clay resigned his parish on 8 August 1878. He did not seek medical registration and consequently his place of practice, if any, is not known to us with certainty, but during this period he resided at Manly. Of course, at that time, registration was not essential in order to practise, it merely defined who could do autopsies and give evidence in a Coroner’s Court. Clay may well have practised but it is also possible that he simply continued with his involvement in the educational controversy, perhaps practising part-time or doing locums to earn a living — we do not know. He obtained a General Diocesan Licence in 1880 (but did not resume parish duties) only to relinquish it again in 1882. Finally, in 1887, he returned to England and died at Clapham on 9 November 1889. Among other interests, he was concerned with questions of public health and dietetics and he published a lecture on this subject in 1878 which he had delivered to the Health Society of N.S.W. in the previous year.
His motives for seeking the Sydney degree are the least obvious of our group. Clearly his Cambridge MA and his status as a priest gave him a social standing above anything the Sydney MD could have conferred but, equally clearly, his MRCS and his nine years experience as a surgeon in the army of the Honourable East India Company would have been adequate to enable him to practise without additional training or licensing. One can only presume that he undertook the examination at a time when he was coming into conflict with the church authorities in order to assure himself of medical contacts should he wish to do locums or obtain other medical appointments. Whatever his motives, he did manage to support himself between August 1878, when he was aged fifty-seven, and 1887, when he returned to England. How he did this is not clear — it would be pleasing to think that the Sydney degrees helped1.
Sydney Diocesan Directory (1881). The Guardian (1889). 13, 20 November. Ford, Edward (1976). Bibliography of Australian Medicine, 1790–1900, Sydney University Press, Sydney. Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigiensis, Part 2, Vol. 2.
1I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Associate Professor K. Cable for providing me with most of the information contained in this biography.
Charles Taylor (1833–1883)
MD Syd. MRCS LSA LMidRCS MB (1873) MD (1875)
Charles Taylor, the graduate about whom we know least, was born in England in 1833. He studied medicine at the London Hospital and obtained his LSA on 5 June 1862. In the same year he also obtained his surgical licences (MRCS and LMidRCS). He registered to practise in September 1862 and held a post as Resident Accoucheur at the London Hospital. During that year he published several articles and case reports on surgical topics such as skull fractures and cervical tumours in the Medical Times and Gazette. By 1864, however, he was already in Australia, resident in the Kiama District. He was appointed Coroner and Public Vaccinator for the district of Kiama on 16 July 1868, and later still, became Surgical Superintendent of the Government Immigration Service. On 23 September 1872, he was appointed Medical Superintendent of the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, a post he retained until 31 August 1883, except for a period of twelve months in 1876, when he had leave to go to England. At the time of his appointment his medical licences were the LSA from London and the MRCS (England), both granted in 1862. He presented for the MB examination in 1873 and the MD examination in 1875.
At Parramatta he seems to have been a citizen of consequence — he received a salary of £600, at least from 1874 onwards, together with a house and £45 per annum in lieu of provisions, fuel and light. He seems to have attempted to run the Asylum in an enlightened manner and was anxious to promote good relations with the Parramatta community. A report in the Parramatta Mercury (5 April 1873) describes a visit of the newspaper staff to the Asylum and reports very favourably on Taylor’s administration, ‘congratulating them on their vigilance and care in securing the comfort, happiness and convalescence of the poor unfortunate inmates, which is so palpably manifested in the whole surroundings of the institution’. This newspaper report, too long to reproduce here, gives considerable detail about the organization of the Asylum into a series of yards (criminal, imbecile, apoplectic, harmless and convalescent). Similarly on 16 January 1875, the Parramatta Cumberland Times carried an equally favourable story about Christmas entertainment and festivity at the Asylum. All this was to change in 1876, during Taylor’s absence, when an apoplectic patient accidentally killed himself while unattended at night, and the Parramatta Mercury became violently critical of the administrator. Apart from a reference to the fact that Taylor was a consultant when Waugh and Rutter performed the first ovariotomy to take place in New South Wales in 1878, we know nothing more of Taylor. He resigned his post in August 1883, presumably because of ill health, and died near Penrith in the same year on 20 September aged fifty.
It is easy to guess what Taylor’s motives were in seeking a University degree. His salary is large enough to suggest that the position at Parramatta was meant to be full-time and, being a government post, it seems likely that the award of the degree in 1873 gave him a better salary. Thus, his predecessor in office, Edward Wardley, whose only qualification was the MRCS, received an annual salary of £475, as did Taylor at the time of his appointment. Subsequently, however, in 1873 after the award of his MB degree, his salary rose to £600 per annum.1
Macarthur Brown, Keith (1937). Medical Practice in Old Parramatta, pp. 106–122. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. The Parramatta Mercury (1873). 5 April. The Parramatta Cumberland Times (1875). 16 January. New South Wales Public Service Lists (The Blue Books) 1868 to 1883. Aust. Med. Gaz. (1883). p. 24.
1I am grateful to the N.S.W. Archives Authority for its assistance.
John Blair (1834–1887)
MD Syd. MD Melb. FRCSEd FOS MB (1874) MD (1877)
John Blair was born in Bo’ness in Scotland, the son of a master mariner, on 9 February 1834. He trained at Glasgow and Edinburgh and obtained a surgical licence (LRCSEd) in 1857. He came to Melbourne in the same year and registered early in 1858. He practised first in Northcote but soon moved to Melbourne where he remained thereafter. He obtained additional qualifications later in life, being elected a Fellow of the Obstetrical Society of London (FOS) in 1866 and a Fellow of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in 1874. He passed the matriculation examination of the University of Melbourne under the Special Regulations, in 1864, but doubtless chastened by the experience of other members of the Medical Society of Victoria, he seems not to have presented for examination. Rather, he followed the far safer procedure, perhaps after seeing the success of Stewart, Lloyd and Moore, of applying at Sydney (MB 1874, MD 1877) and then applying for the Melbourne MD ad eundem gradum (1883), achieved in the same year that he was appointed to the Medical Board of Victoria.
Blair’s importance to Australian Medicine lies almost entirely in his activities with the Medical Society of Victoria and the foundation of the Alfred Hospital. From the time of his arrival in Melbourne he became active in the affairs of the Medical Society and became its Honorary Secretary in 1860, retaining the post for ten years; subsequently he was also President. More significant still, he was an instigator in the drive to found the Alfred Hospital and became one of its Honorary Surgeons at the time of its foundation in 1871, retaining the post until his death. At the hospital he was active in improving the standards of the nursing service and in developing the concept that a patient should pay for hospital treatment according to his means. As a surgeon, Blair seems to have been distinctly old-fashioned with respect to the new methods of antisepsis but, given the date of his training, that is to be expected (cf. Frederick Milford q.v.).
In 1867 Blair married Mary Hunter, a childhood friend from Scotland but, as the marriage was childless, they adopted an Aboriginal boy from Queensland, Lani, who died aged seventeen in 1900. Blair’s widow became bankrupt and senile, but survived until 1921. Blair was an art collector and was said to have built up a fine collection of paintings, some of which he exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1875.
Blair, John (1873). Aust. Med. J., Vol. 18, pp. 167–169. Humphreys, H. M. (1882). Men of the Time in Australia, Victorian Series, 2nd edition, p. 18. Aust. Med. Gaz. (1887). p. 150. Mitchell, A. M. (1977). The Hospital South of the Yarra, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne.
Selby Mars Morton (1838–1891)
MD Syd. MRCS LSA MB (1874) MD (1877)
Selby Mars Morton was born in India, the son of John Morton, a surgeon with the Indian Army. He was sent to England for his education and studied medicine at the Royal Infirmary at Bristol in 1861–1862. He obtained his MRCS in 1862 and his LSA in 1863. He practised for a time in London but decided to migrate for the better climate of Australia for health reasons (‘weak lungs’). He married just before his departure but his wife died on the voyage out. He arrived in Queensland in 1864, registered to practise on 1 September and worked in Roma for a few months. He then moved to Braidwood in New South Wales, registering to practise on 2 July 1867. At that time Braidwood was booming at the height of the gold rush. He remained there for three years before moving to Goulburn where he obtained a post as Government Medical Officer in 1870. He left Goulburn for a short time to practise first in Grafton and then in Camden but then returned and moved into partnership in Goulburn with Peter Hume Gentle (MD Edin. MRCS) who had taken over the local Government medical posts. This partnership lasted until 1887. During his years at Goulburn, Morton became a Justice of the Peace, was Government Medical Officer and was on the staff of the local hospital. He obtained his MB on 6 February 1874 and his MD on 11 February 1877, the last of the candidates to avail himself of the ten-year rule. Doubtless the degrees increased his standing locally and perhaps improved his earnings from government posts, but, as he had a very extensive practice, this latter cannot have been an important consideration. His partner was a graduate so he may have been anxious not to appear less well qualified. He was especially active as a surgeon but, of course, his practice was quite general. He died at Goulburn, a victim of influenza, on 24 October 1891 and is buried in the Church of England cemetery at North Goulburn1.
Aust. Med. Gaz. (1891). p. 60. Goulburn Herald (1891). 27 October.
1I am grateful to Mr S. J. Tazewell, President of the Goulburn and District Historical Society for his assistance.
Thomas Rowan (1852–1935)
MD Syd. MD ChB Melb. LRCPEd FRCSEd LMidRCPSEd MD (1882)
Thomas Rowan is the first of three candidates who took the MD examination after the ten-year rule was abolished but before the Medical School opened (after which the old MB and MD by-laws were repealed). He was a protestant from Ulster, born in County Down in 1852. Rowan studied medicine in Edinburgh and obtained his licences in medicine and midwifery in 1872 (LRCPEd, LMidRCPEd) and, in 1876, he gained his surgical qualification (FRCSEd). In the same year he emigrated to Victoria in the hope that the climate would improve his ill health — he was said to be suffering from ‘weak lungs’, but we hear no more of it subsequently. He worked first at the Bendigo Hospital where, nearby, his brother was running a prosperous winery and vineyard and, shortly afterwards, he took a post at the Melbourne Women’s Hospital where he remained, specializing in obstetrics, for nineteen years. In 1895 he returned to England with his family and then moved on to South Africa; eventually he returned to Victoria, however, lured by new gold discoveries, and spent a few weeks digging for gold near Ballarat. When he failed to find much gold, he resumed practice in Ballarat for some years; after his retirement he lived quietly until 1935, dying at the age of eighty-three. Why the restless Rowan pursued degrees is hard to guess. By means not entirely clear he seems to have obtained a Melbourne MB degree (but no surgical qualification) in 1876 but it is not known how he matriculated or if, in fact, he did. He then applied successfully to Sydney to be examined for the MD degree which was conferred on him in 1882, and then reapplied to Melbourne and was admitted MD ChB ad eundem gradum in the same year. The process seems to have been irregular to say the least and today we would deplore such attempts to obtain ‘laundered’ degrees. What good they ever did him is uncertain.
Macdonald, C. (1956). A Book of Remembrance, p. 55. Melbourne Women’s Hospital, Melbourne.
Craig Dixson (1851–1894)
MB ChM Edin. MD Syd. MRCS FRCSEd MD (1882)
Craig Dixson followed a more conventional course than Rowan in obtaining his degree. He was born in Sydney in 1851, a younger son of Hugh Dixson, a successful tobacco merchant (Craig was the family name of Hugh Dixson’s wife). He was the younger brother by ten years, of Hugh (later Sir Hugh) Dixson, also a tobacco merchant and a noted philanthropist, and the elder brother, by three years, of Thomas Storie Dixson (q.v.), whom we shall meet elsewhere in this book as the first Lecturer in Materia Medica and Therapeutics. At the same time as his younger brother Thomas, Craig studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (they could well have known Anderson Stuart as a student), obtaining his MB ChM there in 1877 and then getting an English surgical licence (MRCS) in 1878. He evidently returned home at once since we find him appointed as an Honorary Physician at Sydney Hospital from 1879 to 1884, but he may have returned to Britain in 1882 when he obtained an FRCSEd from the Edinburgh College of Surgeons. Alternatively, he may have obtained the Fellowship by election without examination, since, in the same year, he was examined for, and received the MD degree at Sydney University. Thereafter, from 1885, he followed a surgical career, holding an honorary post at Sydney Hospital from 1885 to 1890 and an honorary consultancy from 1891 until his death. His acquisition of the MD degree, surely unnecessary for someone pursuing a surgical career, probably reflects a desire to emulate Thomas, his far more distinguished younger brother, who was a good natural historian and pharmacologist. It may have helped him to get his FRCSEd by election. He died on 9 September 1894 and passed into obscurity, overshadowed by his brothers and a cousin, all of whom contributed to making the name of Dixson a permanent monument in New South Wales.
Sydney Morning Herald (1894). 5 September. A.D.B. Vol. 4, p. 77. A.D.B. Vol. 8, pp. 308–310.
Chisholm Ross (1857–1934)
MD ChM Edin. MD Syd. MD (1886) Lecturer in Psychological Medicine (1889–1907)
Chisholm Ross was born in Inverell, N.S.W., in 1857, the son of Colin Ross, an early N.S.W. pioneer. He was educated at The King’s School, Parramatta and then joined his father, who intended him to work on the land. In due course, however, he was permitted to leave for Edinburgh and graduated MB ChM from the University of Edinburgh in 1883; three years later, early in 1886, he received his MD degree there as well. On his return to Australia he received almost immediately his MD degree (1886) from Sydney University. His obituary in The Medical Journal of Australia claims plausibly that the Sydney degree was awarded ad eundem gradum but Senate minutes and the register of graduates unambiguously state that he was admitted MB ad eundem gradum and obtained the MD by examination. If this is so, then Ross was the last practitioner not trained at Sydney to obtain the MD in this way for more than fifty years. (Modern by-laws permit medical graduates of other institutions to submit for the MD degree but the privilege is restricted to those who have a substantial connection with the work of the School — in general, its teachers.) Since Ross became a teacher at the Medical School in 1889, succeeding his mentor and friend, Frederick Norton Manning (q.v.), it may be guessed that his application for the MD was a first tentative step towards getting an appointment at the University, perhaps even suggested by Manning.
On his return to Australia, Ross entered the mental hospital service of N.S.W. as Assistant Medical Officer at the Gladesville Hospital. He fell under the influence of two significant reformers, Frederick Norton Manning (q.v.) and Eric Sinclair, psychiatrists who successively held the post of Director-General of the Insane. One year later Ross was appointed Superintendent of the Newcastle Mental Hospital and later still became Superintendent of the new mental hospital at Kenmore. From 1900, he took charge of the Callan Park Hospital. He held the post of Lecturer in Psychological Medicine at the University from 1889 to 1907, but lived long after giving it up; he died on 6 October 1934.
Med. J. Aust. (1934). II, p. 766. Sydney Morning Herald (1934). 8 October.