On the 3 April 1881 the census recorded the following household at 33 Warrior Square:
Archibald R. Shaw, head, M[arried], 58, physician, born Middlesex
Laura E.S. Shaw, wife, M, 47, born Kent
Charles K. Shaw, son, U[nmarried], 26, Surgeon M.R.C.S., [then in pencil] Medical Office[r] of Health Hastings, born Middlesex
Frank H. Shaw, son, U, 23, student of medicine, born Middlesex
There were also two daughters and four servants.
Charles had indeed been appointed the town’s Medical Officer of Health – just two days before — but was embroiled in a scandal over his appointment.
Dr Charles Ashenden had been the Medical Officer for about six years but had resigned on the 31 January. The post was combined with that of Public Analyst. The pay was £200 per annum.
A hint of the problems to come was in the staunchly Conservative Hastings Observer, 12 February 1881:
But can it ever be possible the Radical Town Council will ever consent to appoint a Tory as Medical Officer of Health ? I can scarcely believe so. The local doctors are almost to a man Conservative. If, therefore, a Constitutionalist be elected it will be simply a matter of Hobson’s choice – not my will, but my poverty consents.
What this comment meant was that for lack of other suitable candidates a Conservative was likely to be elected, despite the fact that the Liberals controlled the Council. The 4 March issue in commenting on the coming selection process said ‘There is a rumour that political feelings are to some extent mixed up with the motives of some of the Councillors. We hope it is not so. This is too important an office to be converted into a party gift.’
The Hastings and St Leonards Times, 5 March 1881, reported that the posts of Medical Officer of Health, and the Public Analyst, formerly performed by one person, would be occupied by different persons, with the pay of the former being £125 per annum and of the latter £75 per annum.
Advertisements for both posts appeared in local newspapers in the middle of March. The Times reported on the process by which the successful candidate was chosen as Chief Medical Officer in its 2 April 1881 issue. I believe it to be a Liberal newspaper.
Nine medical gentlemen, resident in the borough, have applied for the post of Medical Officer of Health. The names were read at the Council meeting yesterday, and included [actually, consisted of] Messrs. Clifton, Harvey, Allen, Joseph, Humphries, Julius, Law, Parsons, and Knox-Shaw. No doubt each applicant sent respectable and warrantable credentials; and in some cases the applicants, from their long residence in the borough, their thorough knowledge of local affairs, and the public recognition of their services in various modes, required little other recommendation.
Mr Knox-Shaw was the favourite, and made the running throughout; in fact, to continue the metaphor, his companions did not even appear on the course. Mr Alderman Davis proposed Mr Knox-Shaw, Mr Alderman Vores seconded the nomination, and no other candidates being proposed, the favourite was appointed. He has all the vigour of youth, and he comes with excellent credentials. Mr Knox-Shaw is licenciate of the R.C.S. and M.R.C.S.; he had been house surgeon and house physician at Guy’s; clinical assistant at the hospital for sick children; and has excellent testimonials from the medical staff at Guy’s, including Dr Cooper Foster, Dr T. Bryon, Dr Pye-Smith, and Dr Taylor.
It then went on to state that Mr Hollebone, a Conservative councillor, complained that it was a political decision, and that the town’s doctors would be unhappy with it. He was described by the newspaper as ‘a little vixenish, to put it candidly’, and the Mayor replied that Hollebone was not justified in making such remarks. He saw no reason why the town’s medical men would not support Knox-Shaw. He was reported as saying that the Council had always been political, and that when the Conservatives were in power they would not allow such liberty as had been granted Mr Hollebone.
The report ended by stating that Dr Knox-Shaw was elected by 14 votes to 3. What was not mentioned was that all of the 14 were Liberals, while all of the three were Conservatives. Knox-Shaw was a strong Liberal supporter, son of a Liberal, and was president of the local association in 1887 and 1888.
The Observer’s report, also published 2 April, was much less favourable to Knox-Shaw and why he was elected. Its regular ‘Flotsam and Jetsam’ column began:
In the appointment of the new Medical Officer, the Town Council must be said to have thrown off the last rag of decency with which they have heretofore sought to cover their party infirmities. A more pronounced political job than that perpetrated by the municipal body yesterday, the annals of the borough could hardly show…
The newspaper pointed out that they had been told that Mr Shaw intended ‘to pursue only the homeopathic branch of medical science.’
The Mayor’s assumption that Knox-Shaw would be supported by the local doctors was misplaced. Twenty-eight local doctors, including Ashenden as the former Medical Officer, signed a letter of protest which was printed in both the Observer and the Times. It included this passage:
Mr Alderman Davis, in proposing Mr Knox Shaw, is reported to have said that “he was a gentleman who stood very high in the esteem of the members of the medical profession of the borough.” Now, sir, in order that it may not be said hereafter that this statement was admitted by us to be true, we think it right to take the earliest opportunity of giving it a public and unqualified contradiction: to many of us Mr Shaw is personally unknown, and he is not only the youngest of the nine candidates for the post, but he is also understood to practise a mode of treatment diametrically opposed to that pursued by the very large majority of practitioners in the town – he is therefore precluded from receiving that co-operation which is so needful.
The same issue of the Times (8 April) printed a fuller account of the Council’s discussion before the vote, quoting complaints by Cllr Bradnam, another Conservative, who said that Knox-Shaw had only been in practice for about 18 months [he had qualified in 1877].
The controversy rumbled on for months. In its 16 April issue, The Lancet had an editorial attacking the appointment. The local doctors who had complained wrote a modified letter to the British Medical Journal, printed in the 23 April issue, which pointed out that Mr Shaw ‘was the youngest in years, the youngest in medical qualifications, the youngest in practice, and consequently, whatever his natural ability may be, the most inexperienced – and a homeopath to boot.’ As late as the 7 May the Observer hinted that Knox-Shaw intended to resign because of the controversy.
The Eastbourne Gazette, 11 May, reported that
HASTINGS seems to be in a little ‘hot water’ over the appointment of a Medical Officer of Health. The inhabitants are dissatisfied with the appointment that has been made, and have petitioned the Mayor against it. They are under the impression that it will ruin the fame of the town as a health resort.
The Eastbourne Chronicle, 18 June, reported that
A largely attended meeting was held at Hastings on Tuesday night, to protest against the recent appointment of [the] Medical Officer of Health. The proceedings were of an uproarious description, and the meeting was dissolved without any resolutions being passed.
There were far too many mentions to cover, such as the Observer claiming that Conservative working men were almost unanimously opposed, if only because the Liberals had earlier opposed a [roller] skating rink in the town.
The homeopathic journals on the other hand reported on his appointment with great satisfaction. Apparently the normal way at the time to describe doctors who were not homeopaths was ‘allopaths.’ While it is clear that Knox-Shaw was indeed inexperienced, I could not figure out how his beliefs in homeopathy would affect his work.
The local Evening Journal, 6 January 1890, in its ‘Portrait Gallery’ series, gave a biography of Knox-Shaw. He had been educated at Hurst Court College and University College School. After training at Guy’s he had come to Warrior Square in 1879 to join his father, who was an allopath. The role of Medical Officer was clearly a part-time one, and mainly dealt with sanitary matters. He had given up general medicine and now dealt with eye problems and eye surgery. He had been the medical officer for the Buchanan Hospital, which began as a homeopathic hospital, and in 1887 was appointed ophthalmic surgeon to the London Homeopathic Hospital, which meant he went up to London two or three times a week. He also had consulting rooms at Harley Stet, used three times a week. Finally, he was also eye physician and surgeon to the Homeopathic Dispensary in Cambridge Road, Hastings.
The Monthly Homeopathic Review, 1 May 1890, commented, in a brief notice titled ‘Hastings Medical Officer of Health’:
We understand that Mr Knox Shaw has been compelled, by pressure of work, to resign the above position, which he has now held for some years, with credit to himself, satisfaction to the townspeople, and we regret to add, to the discomfiture of many of his Hastings confrères.
However a different reason was put forward by the Transactions of the American Institute of Homeopathy, 1891, in an article on homeopathy in England, 1886-1891, by a Southampton doctor:
To prove… that the “old Adam” was still alive, the medical men of Hastings and South [sic] Leonards contrived to boycott and obtain the removal of Dr Knox Shaw from his post as Medical Officer of Health, on the ground that if he, as a homeopathist, was allowed to take prominent part in the Health Congress then about to meet, they would have nothing to do with the Congress and thereby wreck it. Thus situated betwixt “The devil and the deep sea,” Dr Shaw felt compelled to resign his post.
The Health Congress took place at Hastings in May 1889. The Observer, 2 February 1889, had reported that the Hastings Medico-Chirurgical Society had voted by 17 votes to 7 ‘to hold aloof from the Congress.’ This was explained as a formal protest against how Knox-Shaw had been appointed eight years before. Meanwhile Mrs Knox-Shaw was advertising for a cook and an under housemaid for their home at The Gables, 2 Pevensey Road, which had been built for him in 1883 by architect W. Hay Murray. It is the long, unusual (and to my eye very attractive) building uphill from the former Congregational church.
The Observer, 29 March, announced his resignation. In a long and rambling article, the writer hinted that besides pressure of other work the opposition from certain quarters was a factor. He had been a ‘most exemplary’ Medical Officer of Health, a distinct reversal of the newspaper’s attitude at his appointment.
The Mayor at the time of Knox-Shaw’s appointment, Gausden, now deceased, had told the anonymous writer something along the lines of ‘I can assure you we never looked for all this fuss, and could we have foreseen it we should have filled the vacancy with a doctor of the orthodox profession.’
This related to their choosing a homeopath, of course, rather than any regret over being motivated by politics, or his youth and inexperience. The formal letter of resignation, referring to pressure of other work and absences in London, was printed in the 12 April issue, dated 24 March. The local Liberals held a party for him, when they handed over a testimonial and a present of his portrait in oils. A certain Dr Archibald S. Wilson took over the post: he was a Conservative, and there were cries of ‘a party job !’ by at least one Liberal in the newspapers, control of the Council having reverted to the usual Conservative domination. The 1891 census listed him at 3 Warrior Square, aged 30, born St Leonards, living in the household of his father Robert J. Wilson, JP and physician. It is an interesting coincidence that both appointees were living with their doctor fathers at Warrior Square, besides being young and inexperienced.
By February 1891 Knox-Shaw had left for London and in the 1891 census he was in St Marylebone with his wife, three children and five servants, while his sister Lillian was at his old address. He had married at Ore, in 1884, Ellen Elizabeth Spalding, who died in 1919. He remarried, and died at Oxford in 1939.
As for the Public Analyst post, advertised at the same time as the Medical Officer post in 1881, this too went to a homeopathy supporter, Horace Cheshire of the Hastings School of Science.