Given the obvious concern of the public, Lord Dawson,
physician to King George V, issued a statement on 20th January 1936 stating
that: “The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close”. It is a moving
and memorable sentence but the peaceful end was not a natural one as, later
that day, Dawson administered two injections which effectively killed the King.
One was of morphine and the other of cocaine. Dawson took this step to ensure
that an announcement of the King’s death could be made in The Times on the following morning, as this would be considered the
best way of breaking the news by the Establishment, a powerful presence, then
and now, in British society. For King George V, death would bring an end to his
suffering with bronchitis and other lung problems associated with years of
heavy smoking, and the actions of Lord Dawson remain the highest profile case
of euthanasia in the public domain.
Bertrand Dawson was born in 1864 and studied at University
College London where he read for a BSc degree before going on to study medicine.
One of his most influential teachers was E. Ray Lankester, with whom Dawson
took courses in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the academic year 1882-3. 1
Lankester had been re-appointed to his post at UCL earlier in 1882, having
accepted the Regius Chair of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh,
and then rapidly resigned this prestigious position when he realised that he
preferred the academic conditions and way of life he enjoyed in London. Lankester
was impeccably connected and had the facility to make friends across a wide spectrum
- Karl Marx, Anna Pavlova, Sir Henry Wood, Sir Edmund Gosse - and many other
leaders of the Establishment of the time. He also had many excellent contacts
within science, acquired initially from his father’s network (as we would call
it now), but then from his own circle, and he was a man of enthusiasm and
presence, unafraid of taking a stand for things be believed in. 2
Lankester must have made a strong impression on Dawson and probably encouraged
him in his studies leading to medicine - he was a strong believer in “Medicine
and Economic Zoology” - and his ease, and contacts, in Society would also have
impressed the young man.
Throughout his life, Lankester preferred to be called a
Naturalist, as this “linked him to his father’s friends” like Henfrey, Hooker,
Owen and [Philip Henry] Gosse. 3 In contrast to the devout and immovable Christian beliefs of the latter, his view
was that “Christianity was a compound of two things; a system of morality
approved by the united conscience of civilised man, and a fantastic mythology”.
3 Typical of the man, this difference did not deflect from profound
respect for Gosse’s achievements. 4 Lankester died aged 82, on 15th
August 1929, during the last years of the reign of King George V and we have a
marvellous painting made months before he died. 5
Gone is the energetic and powerful figure of most of his
adult life and the description given by Lester and Bowler of the picture sums
up Lankester’s sad condition: 3 “Early in 1929 [or was it late
1928?] Sir William Orpen painted a portrait of Lankester that attracted much
attention at the Academy exhibition. Wearing a brown tweed jacket, Lankester
holds an open book and reclines on a couch. There is great knowledge and great
weariness in the lined face.” The latter sentence would fit equally well to the
late self-portraits by Rembrandt and the loss of faculties and the feeling of
slipping towards death is something, accidents excepted, that we all face. Artists sum it up so well.
1 I am grateful to Robert Winckworth of the UCL
Records Office for providing this information
3 Lester, J and Bowler, P.J. (1995) E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern
British Biology. British Society for the History of Science Monograph 9.
4 Gosse, E. (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse.
[Read in the 1896 Edition. London, Heinemann].
5 This image is reproduced courtesy of the
Birmingham Museums Trust
No comments:
Post a Comment