Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

MEDICAL PRACTICE IN BUCKDEN: 1253 TO 1964 182 desk; and an old resident told the late Maurice Milner that the doctor did his rounds in a pony and trap driven by a servant. Further indications of his standard of living may be found in the appendix to this chapter. His stay in Buckden was comparatively short. He left Buckden in late 1898 (possibly finding it too dangerous: within the space of a few weeks he broke his collar-bone twice: once playing football and secondly when he was out cycling and a ‘stupid pedestrian’ walked into him). On 17 October 1900, he boarded the RMS Oron 1 , bound out of Liverpool for West Africa, and exchanged the comfortable life of a rural GP for the hazards of the fever-ridden Gold Coast, where he worked as a medical officer, working for various mining companies. In a report to shareholders in 1901, the chairman of one company, Attasi Mines (Limited), praised his outstanding work. In 1904, after taking a degree at Durham University and joining a practice in East Grinstead, he returned to Buckden to claim a bride: Bessie Georgiana Gatty, a relation by marriage to the Linton family. (Love seems to have bloomed while they shared the stage in the Reading Room entertainments of the 1890s.) Theirs was the Huntingdonshire wedding of the year: the list of guests and presents stretched over a column and a half in the local papers. One of the presents was the wedding ring itself, given by a grateful Attasi Mines. The Hillyers returned to East Grinstead but eventually settled in Hilperton, Wiltshire. Among Dr Hillyer’s known publications is an article for the British Medical Journal on a death caused by worms (written while in Buckden); he also wrote letters to The Times , in one of which he blamed a resurgence of bed-bugs on the new fashion for wooden bedsteads. The twentieth century The Buckden practice now passed into the hands of Frederick Edgar Williams, BA Cantab, MRCSEng, LRCPLon (1863-1923) . He became Buckden’s doctor and Medical Officer of Health for nearly twenty-five years. The son of a London architect and grandson of a physician, he was educated at Cambridge and Guy's, then worked as a house surgeon in Derbyshire and for the P. & O. line (possibly as a ship's surgeon). In 1898 he married Laura Langley and after their honeymoon brought her to their new home at Beech Lawn (q.v.) in Silver Street. He had the telephone number 1 Buckden, grew prize-winning roses and vegetables (or at least employed a gardener who did) and played tennis. His other relaxation was a day’s shooting. An early case of his, in March 1900, took him to Offord Darcy to attend a man who had tried to kill himself. His attendance was obviously successful: a few weeks later the St Neots Advertiser happily reported that ‘Mr E---- S----- [the paper named him in full] who attempted suicide recently, is progressing favourably’! This might be regarded as somewhat intrusive today, but Victorian newspapers simply acknowledged that death and disaster were of lasting human interest and never hesitated to report them in often grim detail: their original story on this suicide attempt had told a harrowing tale of a little girl following a trail of blood through the house until she discovered her nearly expired grandfather. One of Dr Williams’s most stressful duties during the First World War was to examine local men presenting themselves for medical assessment under Lord Derby’s Group System (whereby men were encouraged to volunteer for military service before they were needed. If accepted, they returned to civilian life to await call-up. During this time they wore an armband to show that they were officially ready to ‘do their bit’ for King and Country.) The Buckden practice covered a wide area, so it was not surprising to find from F. E. Williams’s obituary in the Hunts Post that ‘he was one of the first medical gentlemen to recognise the usefulness of the motor cars, and he was a familiar figure in the district driving in an enclosed car, and always accompanied by a small dog.’ According to one resident, the car was a De Dion Bouton. His death in 1923 was unexpected (except to his wife and a few close colleagues) and shocked the village. His reputation was as ‘a clever, painstaking and sympathetic doctor’, and he had made many friends among his patients, both in his practice and at the county hospital, where he was honorary surgeon. There was a very large attendance at his funeral His wife remained at Beech Lawn for some years after his death. They had no children. Dr Robert Ross Sutter of Warboys acted as locum until the arrival of Robert Allez Rotherham Wallace, MB, ChM (Sydney), LRCP, FRCS (1888-1980) , whose time in Buckden was to prove brief but memorable. Robert Wallace had been born in Australia, the son of an English mother and a distinguished Australian soldier of Scottish descent. He was already working at the hospital in Huntingdon 1 Not a mis-print for Orion ; it was named after a port in eastern Nigeria. Built in 1898, it continued in service until 1914, when the Germans captured it.