Dr. Alfred Haviland
First Medical Officer of Health for the
Northamptonshire Districts (1873)
Much of the following information comes from researcher
Nigel Richardson.
Dr.
Alfred Haviland was a member of a well-known
medical
family in Bridgwater, Somerset, and as the result of a
poisoned finger he had to give up surgery in the early 1870s.
He then
became the first Medical Officer of Health for the Northamptonshire
Districts in 1873. In this post he was responsible
for, amongst other towns, Uppingham.
In 1875/76 there was a typhoid outbreak at a well-known
boarding school there. Several pupils died, and the Town
authorities blamed the school for poorly constructed buildings.
The School
in its turn blamed the Town for inadequate sewerage, and poorly
maintained drains. Dr. Haviland was one of the key figures
on the Town’s side, producing a scathing report which criticised
the Headmaster, Reverend Edward Thring, who was one
of the best-known figures in Victorian education on that side
of
the Atlantic. As a result of the deadlock which then followed,
the school took itself off to the Welsh coast for an entire
year, where pupils and staff were boarded out in a large hotel
and
about 24 small houses.
Dr. Alfred Haviland is often credited with being
the pioneer of medical mapping,
and he wrote a whole series of learned articles on a wide variety of topics.
He died in Surrey in June 1903; both the British
Medical
Journal and The Lancet carried obituaries of him.
Frederick Haviland (son of Robert
Barclay Haviland of the Haviland China dynasty) corresponded with
Albert about the Haviland family tree, for it was Frederick's first cousin, John Von Sonntag De Havilland (son of John
Haviland, Esq., the Philadelphia architect) who anonymously wrote the earliest
surviving genealogy (Chronicle of the Ancient
and
Noble
Norman
Family of De Havilland). John V.S.
De Havilland and Dr.
Albert Haviland had a dipute of some sort, and therefore John (described as an arrogant man) removed any mention of Albert's branch of the family from his book.
In one letter back to Frederick,
Albert wrote:
“Soon after I left Salisbury, I received
a Wiltshire paper in which there was a report of the presentation
of a new gold Chain to the Mayor, who in his speech returning
thanks, alluded to James Haviland, who was Mayor of Salisbury
in 1603. At the time of Queen Elizabeth's death, and James
I's accession, he also mentioned how when James in the same
year paid a visit to Lord Pembroke at Wilton House near Salisbury,
James Haviland and the corporation presented the King with
20 Marks in a silver-gilt Goblet, an equal sum in a purse to
the Queen, 10 Marks to their son, and a fat Ox worth 8 Marks
to their host, Lord Pembroke. This James was son of Christopher
Haviland, Mayor of Poole in 1659 and grandson of James de Havilland,
who was born in Guernsey and first settled in Guernsey.” --Dr.
Alfred Haviland in a letter to Frederick
Haviland dated 16 Nov 1893.
Frederick never completed
a book of his own, but his extensive research was picked up by
his 1st cousin, Frank Haviland (son
of William, son of William
Haviland and Anna Griffen). Frank continued
the research and these notes became the basis of a new book called The
Haviland Genealogy written by Josephine
C. Frost in 1914, herself a Haviland descendant.
(See the biographies in the Haviland
China dynasty, and for Albert's uncle, John
Haviland, Esq., the Philadelphia
architect.)
