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Sir Frederick Treves

Iwerne Minster

Feb 13th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Peel back the patina of a century of modernity and you will find in Iwerne Minster – the village and the parish – much to interest those of us curious about bygone times and Dorset ways. Here is one of only three churches in the county that can boast a medieval spire, here is a large country house and curiosities, and here lived some people deserving of our remembrance.

Equal distance of about six miles between Shaftesbury and Blandford the road we tread today through the village was originally made up in the 19th century by a Turnpike Trust, rendering it suitable for stage coaches.These colourful vehicles brought to the village some gaiety and bustle for the few years before their demise. A parish of 2,865 acres, the eastern half being downland over 600 feet in height, falling to the fairly level valley at about 200 feet above sea level in which the village stands. The small river Iwerne flows through the west of the village.

 About a mile south west of the church an Iron Age settlement and a Roman Villa were excavated in 1897 by General Pitt-Rivers. Ethelgwa, daughter of King Alfred, was installed as Abbess of Shaftesbury in AD 888 and she was given some of his lands to administer including Euwenmynstre.  A charter from AD 956 by King Eadwig (or Edwy) confirmed the authority of the Abbess of Shaftesbury over Iwerne Minster and its five churches; in earlier times the parish included the modern parishes of Sixpenny Handley, Hinton St.Mary, Margaret Marsh and East Orchard; all were parochial chapelries of Iwerne Minster.

Domesday Book records this place as belonging to Shaftesbury Nunnery, from whom it was held in small manors: Brookman’s by Ralf de Brockman, Pegg’s by Geoffrey de Puego and Goodman’s (being three or four meadow grounds adjoining Pegg’s farm) was the manor of Roger Godman. 

On the 4th of August 1645 Cromwell ordered a troop of cavalry from Shaftesbury to suppress the Clubmen assembled at the earthworks on Hambledon Hill and they would have passed through Iwerne to avoid the sharp ascent and descent over the Downs.

Towards the end of the 18th century button making came to Dorset providing much needed employment for women and girls who produced linen buttons; metal rings covered with linen. Iwerne Minster became a business hub for this new cottage industry, which was brought to a close with the arrival of the button making machine in 1851.

As the 20th century opened, modernisation at Iwerne Minster was being ushered in by the folk residing at Iwerne Minster House. The house and estate had been in the Bower family for two and a half centuries when in 1876 Capt. Thomas Bowyer Bower sold it to George Glyn, the 2nd Baron Wolveton; he was a banker and a politician. Glyn demolished the house and in its place had Alfred Waterhouse build him a palatial country residence in the Victorian Perpendicular Gothic style. The 4th Baron Wolveton, Frederick Glyn, who was the 2nd son of George Glyn’s brother, married Lady Edith Amelia Ward in 1895. The couple sold the house in 1908.

The new owner of Iwerne Minster House was James Hainsworth Ismay and his wife Murial Harriet Charles Mcdonald Moreton. Muriel Moreton was James’ second wife. He was previously married to Margaret Seymour who died in 1901 aged 32. The census records for 1891 and 1901 describe James Ismay as a ship owner which is rather an under-statement. He owned the White Star Fleet and made his fortune when he sold it to an American in 1903.

James’ older brother was Joseph Bruce Ismay and he used to regularly shoot on the estate. It was Bruse Ismay who was named in the Wreck Commissioner’s report as being primarily responsible for the sinking of the Titantic.

A look at the 1911 census return gives a clue to the wealth of James Ismay. It tells us he is living off private means with his wife and two daughters. ‘Below stairs’ there were twenty servants living-in.

We should not conclude from all this grandeur that he was a selfish man. By all accounts he took a great interest in the lives of the villagers most of whom would have been his tenants. All the houses had red-roller blinds, which were supplied by the estate office that also made sure all the hedges were regularly cut. The tenants weren’t allowed to strip Ivy from their houses. He insisted all the village boys wore blue jumpers with a red band and all the girls had Little Red Riding Hood cloaks. Interestingly, the flag of White Star Line was a white star on a red background. James Ismay provided a library and a village hall for the community.

On Ismay’s death Iwerne Minster House was bought at auction and Alex Divine started a school for poor children there – nowadays it is known as Claymore School and is for fee paying pupils.

The parish didn’t have to wait until the 20th century for wealth to arrive. Back in the 18th century a local man, John Willis, had for over 30-years ran a school for teaching hand- writing. Such was his fame scholars arrived in Iwerne Minster from all parts of this country as well as from Switzerland, Holland, the West Indies, and the American colonies. He was buried at Iwerne Minster on 28th of April 1760, it is said he made a considerable fortune.

Many of the cottages and buildings in the village are Grade II listed buildings. A most ordinary little shelter with its parish notice boards has made the Grade; more, perhaps, for its history than its architecture. During World War I, James Ismay wrote and despatched newsletters to local men serving at sea, on the Western Front and in the Middle East, with a copy being posted in the shelter along with all replies from servicemen, together with newspaper cuttings and telegraph bulletins. The Shelter became known locally as The War Office and that tradition continues today.

During the Great War some German prisoners of war were put to work at a nearby farm sorting potatoes, which were despatched to London by way of Shillingstone station.

The parish church dedicated to St. Mary is a Grade I listed building. Pevsner says it is “The most important and interesting church in its neighbourhood…” and as such we will devote a separate article about in the future.

As the Edwardian period began Frederick Treves, the surgeon, was preparing his book Highways and Byways of Dorset. In it he uses Iwerne Minster to debate the advantages and disadvantages of picturesque old thatched cottages and red brick modern housing, in Iwerne Minster he could witness the transition being made. As he peered into the future to see what it held for rural village housing he failed to see what today’s home improvement experts can do with an old cottage or derelict barn. Looked at today we can see Iwerne Minster hasn’t faired too badly, there being a pleasant mix of the old and the new.

Harry Pouncy – A great publicist for the Dorset scene

May 1st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Just two months before he died Harry Pouncy visited Pokesdown Technical School in Bournemouth to do what he had become accomplished at doing as an erudite hobby throughout his life: to present a lecture with slides on the beloved county of his birth. Of that lecture on February 3rd 1925 the Bournemouth Echo reported: “There is no one who can talk and bring visions of the leafy lanes of Dorset, charging the air with the scent of its fields and with the atmosphere of its stately ruins and its humble cottage homes like Mr Harry Pouncy of Dorchester.”

Pouncy’s love affair with all things Dorset and Dorset’s people showed itself early. And it cannot wholly be a coincidence that he shared his name and preoccupation with pictorialising Dorset with his contemporaries John and Walter Pouncy, who ran a notable photographic business in Dorchester. Yet their existed no direct blood-tie between himself and the father and son.

However, Pouncy is an unusual name, so it is likely that Harry was descended from a different branch of the family to that of John and Walter, though quite possibly from common ancestors. He was born near St. Peter’s Church in Dorchester and baptised there on December 8th 1870, the son of Thomas Crook Pouncy and his wife Ellen. He had two brothers; Thomas and George Ernest; and two sisters, Mabel Ellen and Michelle Ellen. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Smith Pouncy who married Sarah Crook. Their children, apart from Harry’s father, were Ann, George, Elizabeth and Marianne. Harry was the third (middle) child of Thomas and Ellen.

Growing up within easy reach of the sparsely populated Dorset countryside, Harry grew to love its very soil and acquired an enormous knowledge of the country people’s customs and folklore. He earned a reputation for being a likeable man in every respect. Not surprisingly, his later course as a public speaker and publicist for the delights of his county came to the attention of Thomas Hardy, who became one of Pouncy’s closest friends. The two would meet frequently at Maxgate, Hardy’s home, to exchange information and opinions on the countryside and its customs.

Harry Pouncy began his working life earning his living as a journalist, first as a reporter and then as proprietor of the Dorset County Chronicle and Southern Times, apart from a period serving in the First Volunteer Battalion, the Dorset Regiment during the First World War. In his senior position over more junior reporters he knew the value of a compliment towards them whilst being careful not to flatter insincerely. If a piece of writing from a junior reporter pleased him he would lavish praise unstintingly, and his words of encouragement would have a stimulating effect on his colleagues. On the other hand, slovenliness, bad spelling, wrong initialling and slipshod paragraph writing was anathema to him.

On the 7th of July 1898, when he was 28, Pouncy married Daisy Francis Anwell, a 19-year-old Dorchester spinster, at St. Peter’s Church, near to where he was living. The ceremony was witnessed by the bride’s father, John Alfred Anwell, and Harry’s brother and sister Ernest and Mabel. The Pouncy’s had a son, Harry Anwell Pouncy, born in 1899 and baptised in Dorchester that December. In the 1901 census Harry senior is recorded as a newspaper reporter, aged 31, living with Daisy, young Harry and Lionel Anwell, a relation of Daisy’s, at 41 Culliford Road, Dorchester. As a husband and father Pouncy was a good, kind, patient and conscientious man, and said to be the wisest of counsellors.

Later Pouncy resigned his career in journalism upon being appointed Secretary of the Dorset Farmers Union, his labours for which earned him the respect and friendship of every farmer in the county. Said one leading farmer to a reporter from the Echo: “They thought the world of him. He did excellent work for the organisation and more than that he helped the farmers individually with advice upon questions that perplexed them. He won all our hearts by his zeal and his loyalty and his charming modesty.”

While continuing in the service of the Farmers Union Pouncy acquired a lantern projector and began collecting slides with the intention of sharing his prodigious knowledge of Dorset with the local societies and general public through the medium of public lecturing. Given a lantern picture of a yokel Pouncy had a gift for seeming to make the bumpkin portrayed come alive. He knew the dweller of the open country as no others did.

His lectures included a series called “Old Dorset Rustic Wit & Humour” and it was said that no man was more competent or entertaining in the matter of presenting talks on and about Dorset. Nor was his subject matter limited to customs and folklore, for he could discourse equally knowledgeably on such topics as dialects, archaeology and literature, even singing traditional folk songs. A man of varied interests, Harry was for many years an active member of the Dorset Field Club and Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society as well as a frequent and much welcomed guest speaker at meetings of the Society of Dorset Men in London.

Sadly, in his last year Pouncy’s health broke down, though even then he would not relinquish his duties with the Farmers Union until that organisation compelled him to. He had been a glutton for work all his life, frequently burning oil far into the night, a regimen that may well have prematurely ruined his health and foreshortened his life. The Farmers Union even raised the money to enable Pouncy to a take a convalescent holiday abroad. But the medical restrictions he was under prevented him from enjoying his holiday to the full as he would have liked.

The summer before he died Pouncy talked with a journalist friend in the Bournemouth pleasure gardens, remarking with some irony that it was “the first time in his life that he had the full freedom to enjoy a sort of unlimited holiday.” Like many cerebral men he wrestled with doubts and difficulties over religious faith, though he was ever open to conviction. Once he saw something to be true he cordially embraced it and acted up to his convictions.

Harry Pouncy died in Weymouth on April 28th 1925 after several weeks of illness and was buried in Dorchester cemetery close to that other great writer and surgeon Sir Frederick Treves, who had himself been baptised at the same font in St. Peters and had been born almost next door to the Cornhill house in which Pouncy was born. His funeral was attended by a huge section of the agricultural community, as well as many literary figures. As that same interviewee farmer in the Echo said: “His death was the biggest blow that could have been dealt us.”

Footnote:

From the Kingston Parish Magazine for January 1914

 Entertainment

On Friday, January 23rd, in the Schoolroom, Mr. Harry Pouncy, the Dorset lecturer and entertainer, will give a popular entertainment in the Dorset dialect, comprising a recital from the poems of William Barnes, sketches from the works of Mr. Thomas Hardy (by the author’s special permission), and old Dorset songs and stories. The time will be as usual, namely, doors open at 7, commence at 7.30. Admission: First three rows 1s. ; rest of room, 6d. ; and children of school age in the Class room, 3d.The general Choir Practice in that week would be held on Thursday evening.

 

Newman Flower – Publisher of Distinction

Jan 26th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Within the great cradle-roll of Dorset’s famous sons the name of Newman Flower is one not likely to be immediately recognisable as are, say Thomas Hardy and William Barnes. Yet in his chosen career he achieved outstanding success, and without him and the other practitioners of his profession the works of the great literary giants like Hardy may never have reached the printed page.

Newman Flower was born in the village of Fontmell Magna in July 1879, the eldest son of the village brewer. Being the elder son it was his father’s wish that he should succeed him in the business, but young Newman was a cerebral lad with far loftier leanings towards the literary world. These aims were further fostered at public school, especially when the boy was required by his father to help him out with the gruelling brewery work during his holidays. Then came the fateful day when he would at last confront his father and tell him that he did not wish to make his living as a brewer, but as a writer and publisher. So when his schooldays were over Flower took the “long white road” out of Fontmell shook the Dorset chalk from his feet and went to London.

As a consequence of following up a job lead he had spotted advertised on a board in an alley one hot summer day, Flower landed his first position as an editorial junior on a military paper called ‘The Regiment.’ Over the time he worked on this paper he acquired a yearning to break into Fleet Street to edit a magazine. To supplement his income in the meantime, he wrote articles for various publications as a freelance, though at first most of these were rejected by the editors he sent them to. However a feature he wrote about train drivers, as well as a few other articles were eventually accepted.

Then came his first big break when W.T. Madge, the proprietor of ‘The People,’ had Flower recommended to him as being the ideal man to write a weekly military column for his daily paper. Ideal, because during his years on ‘The Regiment’ Flower had acquired a considerable wealth of military knowledge. Having passed the test of a specimen article, the ambitious young sub-editor then left ‘The Regiment’ to join the staff of ‘The People’ for the next sixteen years under the alias of “Tommy Atkins.” Flower had realised his ambition: he had arrived in Fleet Street.

But then a more draconian initiation into journalism awaited him; Flower received an invitation from a Harmsworth press editor called Charles Sisley to join the company, which would eventually become Northcliffe Press. Sisley needed a new sub-editor for one of his magazines. Newman then agreed to join Harmsworth’s on the condition that his salary should be supplemented at reduced rates for what he wrote. But Flower had entered a hard school, and Sisley was a hard and humourless taskmaster. He invariably had some criticism about Flower’s weekly paste-ups for the magazine he was working on. Then in 1905, three years after Flower joined Harmsworth’s Sisley had a major disagreement with Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) and resigned. The “apprentice” was then left to run the magazine as best he could.

Largely out of desperation about the uncertainty of his position, the acting editor wrote to his friend Max Pemberton, asking if he could arrange for him to meet Sir Arthur Spurgeon, then General Manager of the Cassell publishing company. Its founder John Cassell, a Manchester temperance preacher, had built up the business from printing the labels for the tea he was buying up and re-selling in shilling packets as a weapon to fight alcoholism, among the northern industrial masses. But at the time of Newman Flower’s application Cassells was in the red and making heavy losses through incompetent management at board level. After telling Spurgeon that he had decided to accept an offer he had made to join Cassells, Flower learnt that the publishing house had made a £16,000 loss the previous year and the following year’s figures would be worse still.

Yet gradually the paper on which young Newman was employed began to see a revival in its sales. Encouraged by this turn-around Spurgeon invited Flower to design a new fiction magazine. During a holiday in Normandy the latter sketched out the format for the periodical the two men would name ‘The Storyteller.’ This magazine had to be brought out on a shoestring budget of just £1,600, yet it took newsagents by storm. When Flower resigned its editorship 21 years later he found that his creation had netted for Cassells £262,000. Flower had succeeded where the “greybeards” of the board had failed; he had put Cassells back in the black.

Flower then gave up the editorship of all his magazines and bought Cassells from Lords Camrose and Kemsley so that he could devote himself to his growing interest in developing Cassells as a book-house. It was then 1928 and he was 49. He had been publishing magazines for a quarter of a century, and would be publishing books for a quarter of a century more. Through ‘The Storyteller’ he had already published part works of Rudyard Kipling (whom he had met on a train;) G.K. Chesterton, Somerset Maughan and Phillip Oppenheim. But the 25 years or so he would be publishing authors inevitably brought him into intimate contact with many great literary figures.

Under Flower’s management Cassells published Churchill’s ‘Second World War.’ He saw into print Earl Jellicoe’s ‘The Grand Fleet,’ Frederick Treves’ ‘The Elephant Man,’ and H.H. Asquith’s ‘Fifty Years of Parliament.’ He further published or befriended among others R.C. Hutchinson, Lords Curzon and Birkenhead, H.G. Wells, Stefan Zweig, Sir Evelyn Wood, and edited the journals of Arnold Bennett.

But Flower was no mean writer himself, and through Cassells he published several books including some about the two great loves of his life: classical music and gardening. These were ‘G.F. Handel’ (1923;) and ‘Through My Garden Gate’ (1945.) From 1914 to 1920 he was honorary editor of ‘The Dorset Yearbook;’ in 1938 he was knighted.

During the Second World War, La Belle Sauvage, the ancient building off Ludgate Hill which Cassells, occupied was struck and burnt down by a German bomb. In 1947, the horror over, Flower decided to retire from active directorship of the company to make a new home with his wife and son Desmond at Tarrant Keyneston near Wimborne. Here he wrote what is probably his best-known book ‘Just as it Happened’ (1950) which virtually serves as his autobiography-cum-memoirs.

In his business dealings the reputation of Newman Flower is of one considered to be a stern critic but enthusiastic promoter. He was shrewd yet kindly, always willing to give new writers constructive advice. Flower also was actively involved in animal welfare and indeed made several bequests to animal organisations in his will. His propensity for readily seeking out, and befriending authors, even those who did not publish with him, is legendary. One memorable instance of this came during the First World War when he called on Thomas Hardy at Maxgate, the house the author had designed and built for himself, to commission from him a poem for ‘The Dorset Yearbook’ which, as has already been mentioned he was then editing. Hardy gave him the poem “…and something that was far richer: his friendship to the end of his days” as Flower later wrote. Some years later – towards the end of Hardy’s life – Flower, his wife and son, took Hardy and his wife Florence on a memorable picnic by car one blazing summer day, during which they covered many miles of rural Dorset.

The Cassell chief’s general good fortune was well demonstrated on another occasion, this time in 1912 when beneficent fate intervened with an illness and operation. By the time he had recovered, the Titantic – on which he was to have booked a passage – lay broken in two on the bed of the Atlantic. Flower’s operation paradoxically had, of course, saved his life.

After fifty years in publishing (40 with Cassells) and 17 years of fruitful retirement Newman Flower died at his home in Tarrant Keyneston on the 12th of March 1964, aged 85. Such was his fame by that time that on April 1st a memorial service was held for him at St. Pauls, in the presence of noted authors, editors and publishers, as well as of course the then Chairman, Directors and staff of Cassells. The author Ernest Raymond, who’s first book ‘Tell England’ had been published by the company after 11 rejections from other publishers, and whose later works were accepted by Flower personally, gave the address at the service. The music of Handel, which Flower had loved so much, was played on the organ.

Sir Frederick Treves

Jan 20th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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SURGEON BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT

With heavy hearts a small band of elderly men stood around a small grave in Dorchester cemetery on a bleak afternoon of wintry drizzle. It was January 1924 and the mourners were paying their last respects to a figure of great philanthropy and achievement, born 70 years before in Dorchester. They watched as a small box of ashes was lowered into the deceased chalky native soil. The man they were saying farewell to was Sir Frederick Treves, one of the most remarkable of men from an age of giants and one of the greatest luminaries in the progress of medicine and surgery.

Treves was born in Dorset’s county town in February 1853; the son of a cabinet maker and furniture dealer who had a business on the premises now occupied by No 8, Cornhill. A housemaid fondly recalled that in his earliest days at school Treves’ shyness led him to hide behind the coats in the cloakroom after lessons. In 1860 however, he began attending a school run by the poet and Rector of Winterbourne Came, William Barnes, in South Street.

His famous pupil remembered Barnes as: “…an old clergyman of great courtliness, ever gentle and benevolent, who bore with supreme simplicity the burden of a learning, which was almost superhuman.” Thomas Hardy, who’s family lived only a few miles from William Treves’ furniture shop, early became an inevitable acquaintance; it was a friendship which would last for the rest of young Frederick’s life.

Upon the death of his father William, Treves’ mother Jane sold the shop and moved with her children to London. After attending the Merchant Tailors School and University College, Treves with his two elder brothers embarked upon a medical career. In 1871 he became a student at the London Hospital, where his hard work and dedication saw him rise to become Licentiate of the Society of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In 1877 Treves married Elizabeth Mason, a brewers daughter. That year he joined a GP practice in Cheshire, but soon after fell out with the senior partners over their objections to his suitability to attend the confinement of an upper class socialite. For Treves, the social caste of the baby to be delivered matter not at all, but the principle did. He threw up his practice and returned to London in 1879, living first in Sydenham.

From this time he held a succession of posts over the next 20 years. He became an authority on anatomy and surgery, specialising in the abdomen. On one occasion he wrote to The Lancet urging the importance to public health of the registry of disease by hospitals. He was an effective lecturer, able to communicate well with both academics and undergraduates, and encouraged his students to take notes in the wards as well as in lectures. He also founded the Students Union at the hospital.

One of the several curious and unusual cases of his career during these years came when he was summoned to the home of the American millionaire J.P. Morgan. A new-born baby in the Morgan family was evidently dying from an undetermined cause, which baffled all the specialists present. After examining the baby Treves had to admit that he too was baffled by the condition until a second examination revealed the head of a needle which had penetrated the heart. After seeking permission to perform a dangerous operation Treves opened the child’s chest and removed the needle. As he later stated: “..there was only one thing to do: make a grab for it. If I got it there was some hope. If I missed…. but I got that needle!.”

In 1884, Treves encountered Joseph Merrick, a man born with a hideous deformity of the face caused by an abnormal accumulation of spongy tissue, which also included a curious of the nose, so earning him the name of Elephant Man. At that time a travelling showman, an indignity that incensed Treves and led him to rescue the accursed man from his showman master, was exhibiting Merrick for profit as a side-show freak.

He was examined, but Treves was only able to offer minimal treatment. The physician had to rely entirely upon his kindness and humanity in offering Merrick a better life, which he did by taking him to the Dury Lane Theatre and to visit Princess Alexandra.
Treves later wrote, “…I suppose Merrick was imbecile from birth. The fact that his face was incapable of expression, that his speech was a mere spluttering, and his attitude that of one who’s mind was void of all emotions and concerns gave grounds for this belief. It was not until I came to know that Merrick was highly intelligent, that he possessed an acute sensibility and a romantic imagination that I realised the overwhelming tragedy of his life.”

On another occasion he attended Sir Henry Irvine after the great actor had accidentally swallowed the nozzle of a throat spray. Treves examined Irvine and then had x-rays taken, but on his second visit the doctor discovered that his patient had coughed up the nozzle and needed no surgery to remove it.

Treves left the hospital in 1897 to concentrate on private practise and to develop a career as a writer. Upon the outbreak of the Boer War he was appointed consulting surgeon to a South African field hospital. Here Treves found himself defending the Royal Army Medical Corps against criticism that it was dealing inadequately with sickness. This in turn drew criticism upon himself, though he was active in pressing for improvements. One case in particular during this conflict that would leave a lasting impression in Treves’ mind, and one of many demonstrations of the depth of his human understanding, was his deathbed comforting of Frederick Roberts, son of Lord Roberts of Pretoria, who had been mortally wounded during the battle of Colenso.

In the winter after the soldier’s death Treves upon visiting the grave, found that the heat had drawn Robert’s stark corpse from the ground. The doctor – entirely alone – re-interred the body himself. In 1900, before the end of the war Treves’ services in South Africa were recognised in Dorchester when he was made a Freeman of the Borough. In 1903 he opened an operating theatre in the County Hospital.

But the act of duty he is best remembered by came in 1901, when he was appointed to operate on the as yet uncrowned Edward VII for peritonitis. Treves recalled how, to allay public suspicions that anything was wrong with the King on the eve of his coronation, he was allotted a code number, alias and casual disguise, even disembarking from the train at the previous station and walking the rest of the way to the royal residence.

After the operation Treves joined the King on the royal yacht. In gratitude for literally saving his life Edward made the surgeon a Baronet, Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order and gave him a grace and favour house, Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park. It was here that he was once visited by his great friend and fellow countyman, the Cassells publisher Newman Flower, about a matter of publication. Flower lovingly recalled in his ‘Just as it Happened’ how he found every chair but one in the living room piled high with papers which, upon enquiring, discovered were the pages of an Italian dictionary the doctor was compiling, but which was never published.

In 1904 Treves retired from surgery to concentrate on travel and writing books, medical papers and letters to The Times. That year he also undertook a visit to Japan, where he was presented to the Emperor, an event, which inspired one of his greatest works ‘The Other Side of the Lantern.’ On a later occasion he also met the President of the USA. In the summer of the following year (1905) he made a phenomenal blanket cycle tour of every settlement in Dorset, which became the raw material for his ‘Highways & Byways of Dorset’ (1906.) The retired doctor wrote vividly of his impressions of what he saw in the countries he visited, and in one of his letters to the Times expressed his reservations about the nature of the restoration work being carried out on Puddletown Church.

He held the first presidency of the Society of Dorset Men in London, standing down three years later to make way for Thomas Hardy, though he continued to contribute several articles to its Yearbook thereafter, including ‘William Barnes the Dorset Poet’ and ‘Dorset Seventy Years Ago.’

Treves was a humanitarian, a man intolerant of humbug or deception. He was never slow to temper at any injustice yet had great reserves of kindness and compassion. He did not mince his words over matters, which animated or angered him, such as the standard of medical care in hospitals. During his hospital years in London he could still find time to put in an hour or so of writing each morning before his daily work on the wards began. He was a genius of surgery, yet found time to pursue a wide range of other interests. He was keen on sailing and gained a qualification certificate as a Master Mariner. He is said to have sailed the Channel to France and back every Boxing Day. His coterie of friends included many famous men of books and letters such as Edmund Gosse, Thomas Hardy, William Watkins and William Barnes.

After the First World War failing health led Treves to spend most of his time on the Continent, first at Monte Carlo, then Vevey near Lausanne. Here he was visited by Newman Flower, who encouraged him to write ‘The Elephant Man & Other Reminiscences,’ the book which more than any other documented the extraordinary casebook of his career and his distinguished clientele. Other works were ‘The Lake of Geneva’ and ‘Tale of a Field Hospital.’ On a visit to England in November 1923 he joined Newman Flower for a dinner in London in the company of Edmund Gosse. It was the last time the trio of friends would ever meet up together. In the first week of December that year Treves went up the hill above Montreux to watch a football match. Possibly aggravated by the weather, the great surgeon was taken ill with peritonitis upon his return and after several days in a state of delirium he died in the hotel at Vevey.

William Watkins, who had founded The Society of Dorset Men in London, arranged the funeral in association with Thomas Hardy. But the ceremony had to be postponed twice because of bad weather on the Continent and a delay caused by having to produce the death certificate. After the funeral Newman Flower returned to have tea with the Hardy’s.

Later Lady Treves approached Flower with the suggestion that he should write the official biography of her husband, but the widow later had second thoughts about allowing Treves’ court connection to be publicised and withdrew the request. Since then no biography of Sir Frederick Treves has ever been written.