Medical Men
of Brisbane – Workers for Science and Medicine – Story of the
O’Doherty’s – Work and Romance of “Eva” of the Nation
One of the prominent men in Queensland history was Dr.
Wm. Hobbs, who, when I came to Brisbane, was prominent in the
Legislative Council and in the medical profession. He was of
middle height, sturdily built, and of a sanguine complexion –
clean shaved, with the exception of very short reddish brown
“side lever” whiskers.
Dr. Hobbs was a very energetic citizen. His home was
the present Church House on the Adelaide Street front of the
great property which Bishop Webber secured for the Church of
England. It had been occupied in the days of Sir George Bowen
as Government House.
To me the Doctor was interesting as the first to put
dugong oil on the market as a substitute for codliver oil.
Dugong bacon and the ordinary meat were known to me in the
North.
In “Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences”, pages 55 – 66 the
following is given:- “The natives were great believers in the
curative properties of the dugong. Father has seen sick
blacks, unable to walk, apparently in consumption, carried
carefully to the mouth of the Brisbane River, and there put
into canoes and taken across to Fisherman’s Island, to where
dugong were being caught. There they would live for some time
on the flesh of the dugong, and the oil would be rubbed all
over their bodies, and in the end they would return quite
strong and well. In the early days of Brisbane my father
mentioned how he had seen this for himself to Dr. Hobbs, who
was greatly interested, and afterwards recommended the use of
dugong oil as a remedy similar to codliver oil, and this is
how it came to be first used medicinally in Queensland.”
It will be understood that the writer was the daughter
of Tom Petrie, Constance Campbell Petrie, who later became
Mrs. Geo. Stuart, of Brisbane, and is, alas, with us no more
for ever.
In my earlier days in Brisbane Dr. Cannan lived and had
his consulting rooms on the corner of George and Margaret
Streets, in one of the blocks known as Hodgson’s Terrace.
Later the buildings were converted into the big boarding house
known as Menzies, and now, upon further conversion, as the
private hotel, Kingsley.
Dr. Cannan had been coroner in the days when “Crowner’s
Quests” were held in Brisbane.
He drove round on his visits with a good, steady horse
and a buggy, and had a good practice, but many of his patients
were on the free list. He was rather a philanthropist than a
money-maker.
One of his sons was Mr. John K. Cannan, whom I had
known at Townsville as manager of the Queensland National
Bank. Later he joined the Royal Bank of Queensland.
Of his sons – the grandsons of Dr. Kearsey Cannan –one
is a well-known lawyer, another, Major Herman Cannan, made the
supreme sacrifice in Gallipoli – a brave soldier and a warm
hearted, cheery comrade – and another is General “Jim” Cannan,
who went over to Gallipoli as commander of the famous 15th
Battalion, A.I.F., and returned as a Brigadier-General, with
practically ever honour that could be earned in the hardest of
all the fighting of the Great War.
Those who knew old Dr. Cannan intimately, as I did,
will know how splendid a thing it would be for him to
visualize so fine a roll of descendants. We cannot say whether
there is knowing of these things by those who have passed to
the other life. At any rate, the Cannans of the younger
generations have a pleasant reflection that the original of
the family in Brisbane was one of a noble profession, and
whose kind heart is often gratefully remembered.
Dr. Hugh Bell was a venerable, handsome man, who when I
came to Brisbane had given up his post as Medical
Superintendent at the Brisbane General Hospital, and had a
general practice.
His home was in Adelaide Street, in a tiled roof
cottage, partly embowered in the gleaming leaves and deep
orange flowers of one of our most beautiful vines.
Later Dr. Bell moved to the old house at Milton that
had been the property of Mr. J. F. McDougall, and which, with
its 20 acres of land, had been bought by a syndicate and cut
up into allotments. The grounds were bounded by the River
Road, by Cribb Street, Park Road, and the railway line.
And there the worthy doctor spent the evening of his
days, honoured and well loved. I knew him as a reformer in
hygiene. He mad many practical tests with the view of
improving the sanitary conditions of Brisbane; but, alas, in
those days, when a system in accordance with civilization
might have been so cheaply instituted, people looked beyond
it, but at earth, not the stars.
And the saddest part of it all was, and is, that people
are so accustomed to sordidness that they really don’t see why
“a few cranks” should look for anything better.
Dr. Bell was not only a medical man and surgeon, but
was a lover of art and of good music.
Another of
the old school of medical men – and many of them had the M.D.
degree- was Robert Hancock, who lived in George Street, in a
two-storied brick house which adjoined the Shakespeare Hotel.
The Shakespeare of the old days has long since gone, and our
friend, the late Mr. Richard Gailey, built over the “remains”
and in its place the Hotel Cecil. If the “Shakespeare” was
good enough, it was not sufficiently fashionable. Later on Mr.
S. Glasgow of Gympie – the father of Senator Sir William
Glasgow, K.C.B., etc. and a very great deal of etcetera –
bought the property.
Just beyond the Shakespeare, and on the corner, was a
big block of land occupied by a long, low-roofed cottage, in
which lived my friend and colleague, John Flood. Dr. Hancock
used to be chaffed by his intimates with being “the glass of
fashion and the mould of form.” He wore a black silk hat, a
frock coat with an inevitable buttonhole bouquet, and was
turned out in the very smartest style. He was a robust man,
but like a great artist described by Borrow in “Lavengro,” was
inclined to be
what the racing men term “a bit close to the ground.” The very
beautiful daughter of Dr. Hancock married Captain McCallum,
who was under Colonel Blaxland (Commandant) and Major Moore
(now Colonel Moore, and ex-Chief Police Magistrate), on the
permanent staff of the Volunteer Force of that day.
In the
early 1880s we had no more conspicuous man in Brisbane,
socially and professionally, than Dr. Kevin Izod O’Doherty, a
member of the Legislative Council. It is not proposed to
repeat here the often written history of this pioneer, but to
give a few of my remembrances of him and his family. Of
course, as every one knows, Dr. O’Doherty was sent out to
Australia, as was John Flood and other of the finest Irishmen
we have ever had in the country.
He was
connected with the Home Rule cause in Ireland, which was then
better known as the Fenian movement, but like Flood, he was no
more a sanguinary revolutionist than our present
Governor-General or the heads of any of the Orange Lodges of
Australia.
He was a
reformer, and with his colleagues sought a form of Home Rule
for Ireland, preserving the place of that country within the
British fold, and within what afterwards became the Empire
fold.
John Flood
once said to me” We desired a loyal Ireland with its own
Parliament and the same status in the Empire – we had then
become an Empire – as the colony of Queensland.”
In many
conversations with Dr. O’Doherty, no variation of that story
was given. Yet these two men were transported because they
sought a form of autonomy – since granted on much wider
grounds – for their country.
I do not
say there were no indiscretions, no wild talk, and no violent
deeds, but who in Australia who knew them failed to regard
both O’Doherty and Flood with warm affection and profound
respect? Once in reply to a direct question Dr. O’Doherty told
me that the immediate cause of his arrest and transportation
was a leading article written by him in a Dublin paper. He
thought it was a mild article, but it was linked up with
certain acts of violence on the part of the extreme element,
and he had to suffer. His escape from Australia to France, and
the completion of his medical studies, and his romantic
reunion with “Eva” of the “Nation” are well known
O’Doherty
was pardoned, he returned to Ireland and to England, and the
poetess “Eva” became his wife. Then he cam back to Australia
and practised in Brisbane. My introduction to him was through
John Flood, and we had a very close friendship for many years.
I was one of those who gave him a “send-off” in Brisbane, in
1885, when he went over to the old land and was returned
unopposed to the House of Commons as member for North Meath.
Dr.
O’Doherty at the time of my coming to Brisbane had his home
and consulting rooms in Harris Terrace, George Street. Later
he built “Frascati” in Ann Street. This fine home was bought
years afterwards by Dr. A. B. Carvosso, who in turn sold it
to the Church of England, and it is now part of the St. John’s
Cathedral and St. Martin’s Hospital areas between Ann Street
and Adelaide Street. Dr. O’Doherty took an active part in the
political life of Queensland as a member of the Legislative
Council, but he was not at all a partisan. At the house
warming at “Frascati” we had a very merry “bachelor” party.
The doctor’s boys were then all grown up.
Ned
O’Doherty, the eldest son, married a daughter of General Sir
George French, of the Royal Artillery, who was commandant of
New South Wales after having reorganized and commanded the
Canadian and Queensland Forces. Ned had qualified, and was in
practice in Brisbane, and a prominent member of the Johnsonian
Club.
Willie had
been over to Philadelphia for a degree in dentistry, and was
also practising in Brisbane.
Vincent was
in the Queensland National Bank; and the youngest, Kevin, was
with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company.
Willie was
my favourite, a tall and comely young fellow, but of delicate
health. It was a coincidence that there was something tragic
and peculiarly sad in the deaths of the old doctor’s first
three boys. Ned and Vincent married and left children. Willie
was unmarried and I lost sight of young Kevin. At the
“Frascati” house-warming, Dr. O’Doherty was congratulated upon
having four sons to worthily uphold his name. I well remember
the old man’s words, when in response to an enthusiastic
toasting of his health, he referred to the boys. He said:
“Well, they are here today bright and cheery, but they are in
God’s hands, and we do not know what the future holds for
them.” I was at the time pretty young, and we were often a
wild lot; but the words of old Dr. Doherty seemed to clutch my
heart as with an icy hand. Was it the Celtic premonition?
I met Mrs.
O’Doherty only a few times, for until her later years she was
away from Brisbane a good deal. She was tall, distinguished
looking rather than beautiful, and was one of the least
assuming of all intellectuals the great workers in our
literature and art. A few years ago I sometimes went with my
wife and had tea with Thomas Hardy at “Max Gate,” near
Dorchester, in England, and had the pleasure of a visit from
that great writer and his distinguished wife (also a writer)
at my headquarters at Weymouth. Thomas Hardy was one of the
most homely of men, and found great pleasure in the fact that
my wife knew his poetical works, and above all, she was agreed
with his wife and himself that “The Tramp Woman’s Tragedy” was
the best and most powerful of his ballads. On one occasion
only did I speak to Mrs. O’Doherty of her verse written as
“Eva” of the “Nation,” and she noticed that I liked best a few
of the smallest things which had in them an undercurrent of
sadness. I said: “I can see that the sadness comes from the
sense of failure of Ireland to realise her aspirations, and
perhaps from some feeling that she has not shown the capacity
which we call worthiness.” Also I said that much of the verse
seemed quite impersonal, though generally attributed to a
personal romanticism.
Mrs.
O’Doherty said: “The best that we do must have in it some
inspiration from outside things – patriotism, affection, and
events; but of my best I do not think there is much that
counts.”
Frankly, I
may say that I silently agreed with her estimate of her work.
It had in its grace, sensitiveness, but in it I failed to find
breadth of vision. My view is that the work of “Eva” caught
the public mind of Ireland at a susceptible moment, and that
her own personal romance and the romance of the gallant young
Irishman who was to become her husband, threw round the verse
a false atmosphere. The work, perhaps, was too often, viewed
through glasses violet-hued by sympathy, and that tenderness
coming from the old assessment of the world’s love for lovers.
It must not be assumed that there is not much in the poems of
“Eva” of the “Nation” which is true, and which is charming;
yet readers of today will not find in them the quality of
greatness with which we surrounded then between forty and
fifty years ago.
After the
death of her husband, Mrs. O’Doherty lived at Heussler
Terrace, near Auchenflower, though the terrace no longer bears
the name of that fine old gentleman, who, though of German
birth, was ever loyal to the country of his adoption, and a
fine, enterprising citizen. At a quiet little home looking out
on the beautiful western hills of our Brisbane, Mrs. O’Doherty
saw the skies flame with scarlet and gold, saw the fragrant
tones soften and deepen, saw the purple mists of the range
fade to grey, and the grey to a darkness frowning in the
ravines and thrilling the foliage of the slopes. The hour of
rest had come, and the Sweet Angel of Peace gently touched the
weary brow and left its message there.
In Toowong
Cemetery are two Queenslanders from Ireland – Dr. Kevin Izod
O’Doherty and his sweet wife, the mother of his children.
“Eva” of the “Nation” – gone back to the earth until the day
comes for the Great Awakening. How few of the present
generation know their story; how few appreciate their service
to the world. Not that it matters much to them; but it matters
much to us. It is just the story of human kind –devotion,
service, disappointment, old age – and death. But, thanks to
the Great Father of us all, though that may end the chapter,
it does not close the book.
Dr.
O’Doherty left Queensland at the invitation of some of his
friends in the Irish Party in the House of Commons – John
Dillon, Michael Davitt, John Redmond, and others who had seen
much of him here. He became a candidate for North Meath, and
as already stated, was returned unopposed to the Mother of
Parliaments; but he did not stay there very long. He found the
atmosphere not altogether congenial; he could not stand up to
the association in the public mind of all the Irish Party with
crimes which stained the history of his motherland. And he was
a stranger. The old intellectuals of his young days with their
Fabian methods were forgotten. Save with a few there was
little glory for those who in the past had served and suffered
for Ireland. And he did not like Parnell, then at his zenith.
It was not like that, like other of Ireland’s most brilliant
leaders, Parnell was a Protestant, a son the Presbyterian
Church, for O’Doherty always stood for the idea that Irish
Home Rule was purely a political and in no sense a religious
movement.
He knew
that of the seven members of the Home Rule Council, the
majority – I think five – were Protestants or members of the
Church of England. It was something in Parnell’s personality
that repelled the warm hearted Irish Queenslander. “He was
cold, autocratic, intolerant, and without a scrap of human
sentiment,” was O’Doherty’s description of the great leader to
a few friends in Brisbane. That was not quite correct, for
Parnell’s Waterloo was a woman – another man’s wife.
But it
really was not, in the main, any of these things which brought
Dr. O’Doherty back to Brisbane. Things had gone wrong here
financially, and he had to come home and endeavour to straighten them
out. He did not altogether succeed, though sincere friends
stood by him, and, in the ordinary acceptation of that term,
he went out of the world pretty nearly as poor as he came into
it.
Of one
thing we may be sure, that he took nothing away with him. Yet,
he took much: a great deal of love, a great deal of warm
respect, and many a prayer from the poor whom he had helped,
and the sick whom he had served in tenderness and Christian
charity.
I have made
no reference to Miss O’Doherty, the daughter of the union, for
the reason that I only met her once, and then on a sad
occasion – a tall, slight girl, sensitive, and a home lover,
now the wife of Mr. O’Sullivan, ex-Inspector of Queensland
Police.
It is not
quite sure whether Dr. Bancroft was a botanist or a plant
industry promoter. At any rate, he was a most excellent
physician with the ordinary surgical – and, perhaps, a little
more – skill of the general practitioner. The passing of Dr.
Bancroft was not so long ago as to debar remembrance of him by
some of the younger generation. He went to his rest after
something like a half century here of diligence in his
profession, and much usefulness otherwise as an economic
botanist.
So far as
my memory goes, he was practising on Wickham Terrace in the
early 1880s, and then built a fine brick house on the corner
of Ann Street and Wharf Street. Dr. Bancroft had made a
beautiful home on Ithaca Creek, at Kelvin Grove, before
building the brick house at the Ann Street, Wharf Street
corner, and there he carried out his plant acclimatization and
development. He had a fine knowledge of Queensland plants and
tress, and his friend, Frederick Manson Bailey, shows a
perpetuation of his name in Queensland botanical nomenclature.
The doctor had also a fine property on the shores of Deception
Bay, running back towards Burpengary. There he established
works for the preparation of a meat food, which was called
pemmican, and which had some vogue with the British War
Office. He also had a very useful method of fish preservation.
A relative continued the work at deception Bay, but ultimately
the industry was dropped.
A bluff old
Englishman was Dr. Charles Prentice, who lived out on the road
between the Fiveways, Woolloongabba, and Baynes’s Paddock, or
the bridge across the upper waters of Kingfisher Creek, this
side of Stone’s Corner. He came with the remnant of a fortune
lost in Cornish tin mines, and lured by legends of Victorian
gold.
He had many
and varied experiences in the Southern Land of Promise before
he finally set his face northward to the “Queen of the
Colonies.”
Dr.
Prentice was one of the acknowledged leading botanists of
Australia. As an instance of his repute in this respect, it
may be mentioned that on one occasion a plant discovered in
Queensland, after being sent to the late Baron von Mueller, of
Melbourne, by him to the Cape, thence to the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew for classification, was acknowledged from the
great headquarters of botanical research – with the simple
reply, “Why do you send to us, when you have one of the best
authorities on this subject in Dr. Prentice of Queensland?”
He was Gold
Medallist of his year in Botany at University College, London,
1842. Chess was an absorbing recreation, he being one of the
founders of the Brisbane Chess Club, and an old contributor on
the subject to the columns of the “Field.” Public instruction
also was a life long interest. With the late Sir Samuel
Griffith, Sir Charles Lilley, Hon. John Douglas, and others,
he was a member of the Royal Commission on education in 1874,
upon which our existing system is modeled.
My first
knowledge of that cultured Scot, Dr. John Thomson, more
familiar to me as Colonel Thomson, was when he was medical
superintendent of the Brisbane General Hospital. He was a
wonderfully fine administrator, as well as a general
practitioner, and in his long hospital experience he developed
into a very clever surgeon, as well as physician. Dr. Thomson
joined the Queensland Volunteer Force, later the Defence
Force, and remained an active officer, the principal medical
officer, with General Sir George French, who was the organiser
of our new system under the Defence Act of 1884.
Colonel
Thomson laid the foundation of a very well organised medical
staff, and in turn was succeeded by an officer whom he had
trained, - the late Colonel Sutton, C.B., C.M.G., etc whose
much deplored death was consequent upon the grueling which he
received in the early days of Gallipoli, and later in France.
Thomson was
a scientist apart from his profession of medicine, and he knew
much of astronomy and bacteriology, and he specialised in
photography. He was one of the keenest of students of human
psychology. It was very hard, indeed, to “put anything over
him.” A good many years ago a man brought an action against
the Railway Department of Queensland, claiming damages for
injuries through falling from a train near Clifton. It was
alleged that he had leant against a carriage door, and , it
being unfastened, gave way, and he fell out. His injuries were
supposed to be to the spine, with paralysis of the lower part
of the body supervening. Medical men testified as to the
injuries, and it looked like a guinea to a gooseberry in
favour of very heavy damages. But we all reckoned without
Colonel “Jock” Thompson.
Something
akin to intuition led him to doubt the whole story, and
especially the alleged paralysis. He made investigations on
behalf of the Crown and applied tests. Later on he told me
that he had never before met with a human being whose will
power so absolutely dominated his physical being; but
ultimately the patient scientist got certain little evidences,
and then unhesitatingly declared the whole thing to be a
fraud. Other doctors said “Nothing of the sort,” for the usual
tests for paralysis had bee applied – jolly cruel tests some
of them sounded to a layman. The controversy was waxing warm,
and the something happened. The reports of the case in the
“Courier” were read in other the States, and three of these
came out with the admission that the poor injured man had
played the same game and
secured substantial damages from all of them. The
interrogatories phase of operation by this accomplished
swindler and a confederate was stopped by the almost uncanny
judgment of the Brisbane medical man. Colonel Thomson said on
an occasion: “I’m not so sure that the ruffian did not deserve
some reward for the way he stood the tests we applied. Often
they were so severe that I felt inclined to ask if I might not
possibly be wrong.” Later, in the Brisbane Gaol, the paralytic
took up his bed and walked, and confessed to the whole story.
Every one
who was in Brisbane in the 1880s will remember Dr. Herbert
Churchill Purcell, who was
about 20st weight, and yet was one of the most active
men. He was a remarkable demonstrator of high kicking. It was
his boast that he could kick the hat off any man’s head
without touching the man, and he was always willing to back
himself. One day a few of us laid a trap for him. We decoyed
him into the Longreach Hotel, and while a couple discussed the
science of the French savate with him, another couple held in
readiness in another room, an unconscious accessory in the
person of Mr. Gough, P.M., colloquially known as “Long Gough.”
When the doctor had been led up to a reiteration of an offer
to kick any man’s hat off, a signal was given, and Mr. Gough
was ushered in by the second section of conspirators.
“Well,
Purcell, try it with Gough!”
Now, Mr.
Gough – as the people of Warwick will remember – stood to
about 6ft 6in. Dr. Purcell was Irish, a real Dublin “jackeen,”
and he saw the joke. So did Gough, who was what we now
describe as a “sport.”
Well, the little room was cleared. Gough, with some
trepidation, tilted his hat back a little, and stood to
attention. Purcell made two quick steps forward, and his great
bulk rose. The left leg shot upwards like the arm of a
semaphore, and Gough’s hard felt hat went bang against the
ceiling. In those days there was the peculiar practice of
defeated conspirators making peace by the purchase for their
intended victims and his friends of certain pleasantly
stimulating beverages. I know that I had to pay my share of
the little bill. Gough said: “By jove, doctor, you are wasting
your time. You ought to be in a circus.” Dr. Purcell rather
seemed to agree. Dr. Purcell was interested with a nephew, one
of the Churchills, in the distillation of a preparation of
eucalyptus oil from ti-tree, with works at Nundah, which then
was pretty well “out in the bush,” but I fancy the enterprise
was not a financial success.
Quite the
opposite personally to Dr. Purcell was Dr. William Lyons, who
was first practising in Harris Terrace, and later in Gipps
Street, Valley. Dr. Lyons was a very clever man, and he and
Mrs. Lyons entertained a great deal. It was at their house
that I first met Robert and Mrs. Brough, who were playing in
“Iolanthe,” Brough as the Lord Chancellor and Mrs. Brough
(then known as Florence Trevelyan) as the statuesque Queen of
the Fairies.
It is a bit
of journalistic history the fact that Mrs. Lyons was the first
of what we may term the society writers in Brisbane. It was my
job to write a special article on Cup Day at the Queensland
Turf Club races, and in it the social as well as the sporting
and philosophic elements were developed. It occurred to me
that some of “Those Present” notes, with special reference to
dresses, would be an interesting feature, and so I asked Mrs
Lyons if she would give me about half a column. Mrs. Lyons was
a very clever and accomplished woman, and she not only
consented, but did the job remarkably well, and to the extent
of a column.
I cannot
say that the article was received with much enthusiasm in the
office, but outside it created rather a pleasant sensation.
The only defender of it in the office was Mr. Charles Hardie
Buzacott, but even he, while thinking it a journalist coup,
feared that it might degenerate “to the level of some of the
English papers.”
After the
death of Dr. Lyons his widow married Mr. Heath, who was a
solicitor with Hart and Flower, and lived on the hill on the
eastern side of the railway line, just beyond Taringa railway
station; and the last I heard of Mrs. Heath was in connection
with a very bad street smash in Paris.
I remember
well Dr. John W. F. Blundell because he was a leader writer
for the “Courier” and for the “Telegraph,” and contributed to
other papers; but I did not know him at all intimately. As a
fact, Dr. Blundell, though gentle by nature, and entirely
without assertiveness, was temperamentally exclusive. He was a
son of Thomas Leigh Blundell, M.D., who was rather an eminent
physician in his day. The records show that he was consulting
physician to the Duke of Cambridge, and honorary physician to
the Royal Maternity Charity in the early Victorian days – the
Queen Victoria days.
When Dr.
John Blundell came to Queensland he devoted himself rather to
literature than to the practice of his profession, though he
was an M.D., and L.R.C.P. of Edinburgh. He was the author of
several medical works, and had a very wide knowledge of
contemporary as well as earlier writers.
It was
interesting 45 years ago, when we were nearer early Australian
history, and to a great tragedy of the Arctic, to know that
Dr. Blundell was a relative of Sir John Franklin. He had his
home and clinic – though we did not speak of clinics in those
days – over in Vulture Street, and had a quiet practice, but
very few knew of his fine qualifications or of his
contributions to the passing literature of those long ago
days. A son of Dr. Blundell is well known in Queensland, Mr.
P. A. Blundell, the managing director of the Queensland
Trustees Ltd., who had his younger training in finance and
business, and perforce had to stand up to the world and his
fellows, but who, nevertheless, has much of a literary, and
particularly of an artistic, taste. That, of course, is an
inheritance.
Dr. John
Campbell practised in Maxwell Place, Ann Street. Maxwell Place
had then rather a genteel atmosphere – a row of single storied
brick buildings, with the inevitable, and to me, abhorrent,
stucco fronts. The property now belongs to the Church of
England, part of the St. John’s Cathedral area.
Dr.
Campbell was a Scot, though there are plenty of Campbells in
Ireland and England, and a popular man, cheery, and an
indefatigable worker. Later he married Mrs. Watt, who had a
school for ladies in Harris Terrace, and I think he then
practised in the George Street row, which was in the early
1880s quite affected by the medical profession. Mrs. Watt, I
remember, was the widow of a Presbyterian clergyman, who came
to Queensland at the instigation of the original David
McConnell, of Cressbrook, and whose parish was in the district
of which the prosperous town of Toogoolawah is now the centre
– Cressbrook, Eskvale, Mount Brisbane, and so on. At Mrs.
Watt’s school were the older daughters of Mr. Matthew Goggs,
who was a well-known pastoralist, living up at Wolston.
One may be
permitted to say at this remote period that they were very
beautiful girls, whom we all very greatly admired from the
aesthetical point of view. And the first of the Misses Goggs
became the wife of Edwyn Lilley, a young barrister, the eldest
son of the Chief Justice, Sir Charles Lilley, and she has sons
and daughters who have distinguished themselves in medicine
and in other walks of life with a special remembrance for a
great service when our Empire needed every brave heart and
strong hand.
Dr.
Campbell has been long years dead. Mrs. Campbell lately passed
away in Brisbane. I remember her as a stately lady with a
touch of gold in a mass of brown hair, distinguished and
gracious, and with a great capacity for work. A son of Dr. and
Mrs. Campbell id Dr. Argyll Campbell, M.D., D. Supreme Court.,
member of the Research Staff, National Institute for Medical
Research. He was a Brisbane Grammar School boy, and after
qualifying in medicine and taking his science degree, was
employed on research work in the East. He married a daughter
of the late Mr. T. S. Cowell, of Brisbane.
Another
M.D. was Dr. John Neill Waugh, also M.R.C.S. of England and
L.S.A., who was born in London in 1818. Dr. Waugh was the
first homoeopathist I had known in practice, though the
Hahnemann system, the simila similibus curantur, was getting
old even in 1881. Many wrong impressions exist as to this form
of medical practice, but, however great its virtues may be, it
has not spread. At the time of Dr. Waugh’s death, in August,
1900, it was mentioned that he was a student of St.
Bartholomew’s, London, taking his first degree in London in
1840, and the M.D. at St. Andrews.
He was at
his professional genesis a ship’s surgeon of the Old East
India Company, in the army of which my own grandfather and
great grandfather had served before coming to Australia in
1818.
Dr. Waugh
spent a few years in India, and was for some years physician
at the Homeopathic Hospital, in Great Ormond Street, London.
He was a muscular Christian, specialised in rowing, being an
original member of the Ilex Rowing Club, and he rowed in a
winning boat in 1848, receiving a silver oar as a trophy. He
liked well to remember that he was a foundation member of the
London Rowing Club.
He came out
to Queensland with Mrs. Waugh in the early 1860s, and
practised in Stanley Street, but was flooded out – and that
will not surprise those who remember 1893 – and moved over to
North Quay to one of the cottages recently demolished by the
Tritton extensions. Later, Dr. Waugh moved farther east on
North Quay to the brick house where members of his family
still live. He went to his rest in 1900. A son is Mr. George
Waugh, solicitor, who is very well known in the profession,
and in connection with the social and municipal life of
Brisbane. My association with the doctor was in connection
with the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland, of which he
was for many years President.
Dr. John
Mullen was a tall man, and in his youth had been very strong
and active. Probably he was about 6ft 2in., And at, say, 30
years of age, would have been about 14st. It was no unusual
thing to find Irish athletes weighing up to 14st., who could
shake evens for 100 yards, crack a mile in 4.40, and jump 6ft
high.
Dr. Mullen
had his rooms, when I knew him, in Ann Street, on the left
after passing the Union Hotel, going towards the Valley. – a
two storied brick house. He had a good practice, and was very
comfortably off. He knew how to make money and to stick to it.
As a legislator he was not conspicuous, indeed very few were
in the Legislative Council in those days, when a speech maker
– unless such a man as Sir A. C. Gregory or F. T. Brentnall,
or A. J. Thynne, or Dr. W. F. Taylor – would not have been
tolerated. Yet in the Upper House there were other very able
men. Dr. Mullen had a son, a very smart and handsome young
fellow, and a daughter. Miss Mullen was a good musician.
Dr. Mullen
and Dr. O’Doherty were not the only two of the profession whom
I knew in the Legislative Council. Dr. W. F. Taylor , who had
been practising at Warwick, came along to Brisbane, and was
called to our local Lords. He has been and still is, a
prominent and well loved citizen, one of the ablest and
kindest of men. He took a keen interest in the Queensland
geographical Society and other science organisations here.
Dr. Marks,
too, was a very useful legislator and a bust practitioner. He
has always loved the country, and I knew him well when he
spent his holidays at Scarborough, at the old Hobbs house on
Reef Point, now rebuilt by Mrs. Jocumsen. The doctor now has
an abode out Mountain Camp way, in the hills and stillness. He
had a quiet way, but was a keen debater on subjects which he
specially understood, and it soon became apparent in the
Council that he had a very warm sense of humour.
Mr. Patrick
Macarthur, of Cunnamulla, a son of the Patrick Macarthur
earlier mentioned, who was the Sheriff and the father-in-law
of Mr. Justice Chubb, tells me that Macarthur père had been
Police Magistrate at Roma, Surat, Ipswich, Rockhampton, and
finally Bowen, when he retired, and he and his wife afterwards
lived and died at Clayfield, near Brisbane. I remember him at
Cooktown, when he was Sheriff of the Northern Supreme Court,
and came on circuit with Mr. Justice Sheppard. One daughter
was the late Mrs. C. E. Chubb, as already mentioned, wife of
Mr. Justice Chubb; another married Aulaire Morissett,
Inspector of Police, and another married Dick Barker, of
Eungella Station, near Mackay, a son of William Barker, of the
Logan, and of Nunnington, Kangaroo Point, one of the most
hospitable of Brisbane homes. My contemporaries of the Barker
family in Brisbane were Harry and Fred., both of whom were
fine horsemen. Harry Barker was the owner of a few good
racehorses, a gallant old chestnut being one of the best we
had at Eagle Farm over the hurdles. Harry Barker married one
of the beautiful Macdonald sisters, the other becoming Mrs.
Hervey Murray-Prior, and later Mrs. Charley Smythe. Fred
Barker, one of the best, is in Brisbane again with his wife,
and it seems only yesterday – or the day before yesterday,
perhaps – that Mrs. Fred was a Brisbane belle, and they like
other properly constituted young folk, would dance all night
and keep going all day for a week at a time.