Since there have since been some long biographies posted on this forum, I decided to add that of Dr Hall.
Dr A W Hall FRCSEd
Surgeon-Lieutenant, Durban Light Infantry
Arthur William Hall was born on 26/5/1861 in Scopwick, Lincolnshire, where his father, Charles, was the Vicar of the Holy Cross Church. Charles and his wife Eleanor, had six children, whose names were recorded on the 1871 Census as:
Charles, Arthur, Ellen, Henry, Mildmay and Edmund. The household included three servants. By the time of the 1881 Census, Charles, Arthur and Ellen had left the family home.
What became of Arthur after he left home is not known, but on 1/5/1889, when he was aged 28, he enrolled to study Medicine at St Mungo’s College in Glasgow, which is now part of the University of Glasgow Medical School. A detailed record of his “Schedule for the Course of Study” between 1889 and 1893 is preserved, and it reveals the comprehensive coverage of the fields of study then required of medical students. Arthur obtained what was known as the “Triple Qualification”, which included the Licentiateship of the Edinburgh Royal Collegeof Surgeons, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the then Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He was clearly an excellent student, and obtained the Gold Medal for Senior Anatomy in 1891, and the Bronze Medal for the Practice of Medicine in 1892-3. On 16/10/1895, Arthur was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
After obtaining his Fellowship, he must have left almost immediately to start his professional career as a Medical Doctor in Durban in what was then the Colony of Natal. There are several files in the Pietermaritzburg Repository of the South African National Archives that record aspects of Arthur Hall’s residence in Natal. Their contents are sometimes of a contentious nature, and Arthur was clearly not reticent in expressing his opinions on matters involving his professional career.
The Archive records show that Arthur was married and that his wife, Laura, had accompanied him to Durban. Nothing more is known of Laura. The marriage was childless.
Also revealed is the fact that Hall’s younger brother, Mildmay, later settled in Natal as well. The 1896 Clerical List shows that he had obtained a BA from Oxford University and had followed in his father’s profession. In 1894 he had been the Curate at Little Houghton in Hampshire. He arrived in Natal during 1896 having travelled from Southampton on the SS ‘Trojan’. By 1899, he is known to have been officiating at St Michael& All Angels Church in Eshowe, Zululand, which had shortly before been incorporated into Natal.
According to a letter written by Laura to the Colonial Secretary’s Office dated 27/11/1896, Arthur obtained a license to practice medicine in the Colony on 24/1/1896. It was then that he placed his “plate” at “Raws the Chemist” advertising his presence. However, it later emerged that he did not open his practice in Durban, but was instead appointed by the Office of the Protector of Indian Immigrants as Surgeon Superintendent to serve on ships transporting indentured labourers from India to Durban. This engagement was to last until February 1897.
On a voyage of the SS ‘Umlazi’, Arthur’s entry in the Journal of the Surgeon Superintendent for 4/4/1896 recorded that, during a “rainsquall”, many of the Indian immigrants had been displaced from their “sleeping places” by flooding. A confrontation took place between Arthur and the Captain of the ship, which later led to an exchange of letters between the Protector of Indian Immigrants and King & Sons, the ship’s agents, about the behaviour of the Captain. The agents indicated that there had been no such incident previously, and that steps were taken to ensure that it did not happen again. The agents also raised a counter complaint about Arthur having had his wife accompany him on the voyage, which was the cause of “a good deal of friction” between the Captain and Arthur. The Protector undertook to ensure that this practice was discontinued.
While the incident on the ‘Umlazi’ was described as “very trivial” by the Protector of Immigrants, it showed that Arthur was not cowed by officials of whatever rank, and his combative nature soon revealed itself again.
During August 1896, an issue arose between Arthur and the Medical Board when the Board informed him that, after receiving his license to practise medicine in the Colony, he had failed to pay for a second license required by the Stamp Act, and that payment of £5 for the year 1896 was required. Resolution of this issue was delayed until February 1897 after Arthur returned from another voyage to India. In a correspondence with the Principal Under Secretary in the Colonial Secretary’s Office, Arthur claimed that he was not liable for the 1896 payment as he had in fact not opened his practice in Natal owing to his employment by the Office of Indian Immigrants. He did, however, pay the £5 license fee for 1897 on 13/2/1897.
In spite of his determination to stand firm, and even going to the lengths of taking legal advice on his case, Arthur’s inexperience in dealing with government bureaucracies only prolonged the exchange of letters with the Principal Under Secretary. Arthur finally and grudgingly conceded defeat and paid the £5 owing since 24/1/1896 on 4/4/1897. The cost of this matter to Arthur in terms of time, money and emotion must have been considerable and worth far more than £5, whereas to the bureaucrats it was ‘all in a day’s work’ paid for by the taxpayer!
The memory of this matter evidently rankled with Arthur, and in 1899 he again crossed swords with the Principal Under Secretary. On 8/2/1899, he wrote asking how it was possible for a medical man to work in Durban without a license. He was asked to provide the name of the man in question, and, after doing so, Arthur was informed by the Natal Medical Council that the man was registered to practice both in Natal and Great Britain. Round 2 to the bureaucrats!
In 1897, a significant development took place in Arthur’s life, and one that would have tragic consequences that led ultimately to his premature death.
The military defence of Natal was undertaken by an Imperial Garrison based at Fort Napier in the capital, Pietermaritzburg, the paramilitary element of the Natal Police, and regiments of part-time volunteers (militia) made up by the Colonists themselves. The volunteers were controlled by a permanent secretariat based in Pietermaritzburg, although the individual regiments were headquartered in regions of the Colony (e.g. the Natal Carbineers in Pietermaritzburg, but with squadrons based in towns throughout northern Natal; the Natal Mounted Rifles in Durban, but recruiting in the central and northern coastal districts; and, also in Durban, the Durban Light Infantry). Each of the regiments had an ambulance detachment, and, in 1895, these detachments were merged to form the Natal Volunteer Medical Corps (NVMC).
Each of the volunteer regiments had one or more local doctors attached to it, and, on 14/4/1897, Arthur was appointed Surgeon-Lieutenant to the Durban Light Infantry (DLI). Arthur is included in two group photographs preserved in the DLI archives. The first shows him as one of eleven officers at the 1898 Easter Camp, while the second is of the DLI Ambulance Detachment in early 1899. The latter has Arthur with six other ranks, who were presumably orderly/stretcher bearers. A remarkable feature of these photographs is that Arthur is the only one of 17 men without a heavy moustache, which was evidently a fashionable facial adornment of Natal’s soldiers in late Victorian and Edwardian times. Perhaps Arthur felt the need to distinguish himself from the Colonials, rather than simply copy them.
By the start of 1899, war with the two Boer Republics seemed increasingly likely, and September that year saw the deployment of the Natal Police to monitor the Colony’s border; the strengthened Imperial Garrison deployed regiments to bases closer to the border; the local volunteer regiments were mobilised; and irregular regiments were raised mainly from Transvaal refugees (‘Uitlanders’).
On 23/9/1899, the DLI was preparing for war with a shooting practice at its range, and, during this exercise, Arthur was accidentally wounded. He had fired six shots from a revolver and then handed the weapon to a Private to discharge the last six rounds of the exercise. While ejecting the spent cartridges one, that had been miscounted or misfired, discharged. The edge of the Private’s hand was lacerated and Arthur was felled by the bullet passing through his right thigh, fortunately missing both his femur and femoral artery. Arthur was taken to hospital where he remained until 4/11/1899.
Arthur was unable to join the DLI’s deployment to Colenso on 30/9/1899, and, after his discharge from hospital, he was posted as a temporary measure to the Assembly (Volunteer) Hospital in Pietermaritzburg by Major J Hyslop, Officer Commanding the NVMC. He remained on duty at this hospital until 23/1/1900. Since he was not with his regiment, he was not paid while in Pietermaritzburg and this inequity would later tax the minds of Arthur’s nemeses, Natal’s bureaucrats, before it was fairly settled.
Arthur returned to service with the Natal Volunteer Force on 24/1/1900. The DLI was one of the Natal regiments not besieged in Ladysmith, and it had its headquarters at Highlands, a farm between Mooi River and Estcourt. Arthur was placed on the staff of the Mooi River Hospital. A little more than a month later on 28/2/1900, the day the Siege of Ladysmith was ended, the Commandant, Mooi River, sent a telegram to the Assistant Adjutant General in Pietermaritzburg stating that, “Lieut A. W. Hall Volunteer Medical Corps reported dangerously ill here enteric”. This was followed by a request for his wife’s address, so she could be informed. Hospital staff in Natal were by then experienced with the prognosis for patients with enteric (typhoid), and they correctly interpreted Arthur’s terminal condition. Laura went to Mooi River to be with Arthur and she was there when he died on 20/3/1900.
So ended Arthur’s relatively short and somewhat troubled residence in Natal. He was the only one of 23 NVMC doctors to die on service. Nine of those doctors survived the privations of the 118 day Siege of Ladysmith, a remarkable achievement, because enteric was rife in Ladysmith during the Siege and medical personnel were in daily close contact with enteric patients. Whether or not the relatively inexperienced Arthur was somehow responsible for his own infection will never be known.
Enteric was the great scourge of the Boer War, and it killed far more soldiers than fell in battle. The total number of graves in Ladysmith’s Intombi Hospital Cemetery used between the start of the Siege and about 20/3/1900 was 660, of which 448 (68%) were for victims of enteric.
For his Boer War service, Arthur was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal with the Relief of Ladysmith clasp. The medal was presumably sent to Laura, where it joined other relics of his life. The QSA and the St Mungo’s Bronze Medal are all that are known to survive.
It was after Arthur’s death that his brother Mildmay became involved with his affairs. Mildmay was appointed Executor of Arthur’s Estate, and both he and Laura contributed to another lengthy exchange with Natal’s bureaucrats on the subjects of moneys owing to the Estate, and of a pension for Laura. The tedious ‘red tape’ was effectively dealt with, not least because of support and glowing testimonials provided by Mildmay and Arthur’s fellow officers in the DLI, NVMC and Volunteer Department.
His NVMC Commanding Officer, Major Hyslop, described Arthur as “one of our most painstaking and zealous Medical Officers”. He also recorded Arthur’s “very lively” and “devoted” interest in the Volunteer Department. He wrote that Arthur had received no pay while posted to the Assembly Hospital, and that he hoped this matter would be rectified. It was. All other moneys owing to Arthur were also paid, and the Estate was wound up with Mildmay agreeing to pay in full all preferential charges on the Estate.
The matter of a pension for Laura fell to the Department of Lands & Works, and, thanks to the efficient input and support from Captain W Molyneux of the Volunteer Department, in June 1900 it was decided that she would be paid a gratuity of £310 and an annual pension of £104. This was a generous settlement by the standards of the time.
The last record of Laura so far uncovered in the Pietermaritzburg Archives is a letter dated 3/1/1902 that she wrote to the Colonial Secretary’s Office about the payment of her pension. In it she revealed that she had been in England and had been receiving her pension there, but that she had returned to Natal and was living at the Nottingham Road Hotel, which is about 15 km south of Mooi River. What became of her after that is not known, but presumably there was a good reason for her preferring to be in Natal, rather than in England. Perhaps she simply wanted to be close to her husband’s grave.
There is brass plaque commemorating Arthur in the Church of the Holy Cross, Scopwick. It is inscribed:
“In loving memory of Arthur William Hall FRCSE of Durban, Natal. Second son of the Vicar of this Parish, born 26th May 1861. Died 20th March 1900. For some years Surgeon to the Durban Light Infantry he died of enteric fever while on active service during the Boer War. His body lies in the churchyard at Mooi River.
Blessed are the pure at heart for they shall see God.
This tablet is erected by his wife and his father.”
The Church of the Holy Cross was closed on 17/7/2013 for Health & Safety reasons.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Berenice Baynham (England), Jenny Duckworth (Pietermaritzburg), Steven Kerr (Edinburgh), and Rory Reynolds (Pietermaritzburg) for their assistance in the preparation of this report.
Brett Hendey
29/11/2015
