Person:William Stokes (18)

It was the fifth child of William Stokes, Sir William Stokes (1838-1900), who kept in the medical career path of his father, and he was the third of this remarkable family to achieve eminence. He was a noted surgeon, becoming Professor of Surgery at The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and became Surgeon in Ireland to the Queen. He was knighted for his medical services. William was born 10mar1839 at Dublin and died 18aug1900 at Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He married 1869 Jane Elizabeth MOORE (1846-1938). Jane was daughter of Rev. John Lewis Moore DD, senior fellow and vice provost of Trinity College, Dublin; she had 1 son and 2 daughters (Dict. of National Biography).

Nat. Dic. Biography: Stokes, Sir William (1839-1900), surgeon, was born at 50 York Street, Dublin, on 10 March 1839, the second son of William Stokes (1804-1878), physician, and Mary, second daughter of John Black of Glasgow; Margaret Stokes, the archaeologist, was his sister; Whitley Stokes (1830-1909), the philologist, was his brother. He was educated at the Royal School, Armagh, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated BA in 1859, and MB, MD, and MCh in 1863. He was awarded the gold medal of the Pathological Society of Dublin in 1861, and became its president in 1881. He was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1862, and a fellow in 1874. He spent two years in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague, where his father's reputation gained him access to the most renowned teachers in those cities.In 1864 Stokes settled in practice at 3 Clare Street, Dublin, where he remained until 1878; he then moved to 5 Merrion Square North, which his father had occupied for many years. In 1864 he was elected surgeon to the Meath Hospital, in succession to Josiah Smyly. He resigned this post in 1868, on his appointment as surgeon to the House of Industry Hospitals. Stokes married, in 1869, Jane Elizabeth, daughter of the Revd John Lewis Moore DD, senior fellow and vice-provost of Trinity College, Dublin. They had one son and two daughters.Stokes, like so many of his distinguished family, was extremely versatile. A good surgeon and an excellent teacher, he was also an orator and a master of English composition. He was, besides, a cultivated musician, with a lovely tenor voice, which was often heard in private society. He was beginning to take a leading position as a surgeon when in the autumn of 1871 his judgement and skill came under unpleasant scrutiny during the Dublin murder trial of Robert Kelly for the alleged murder of Head Constable Talbot, a police spy. The defence offered was that death was caused by the surgeon's knife rather than by Kelly's pistol. Roger McHugh's play, Trial at Green Street Courthouse, staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1941, recreated the drama, and it seems probable that Talbot (who had walked into the hospital) would have survived had Stokes not unwisely persisted in attempting to remove an inaccessible bullet lodged at the base of the skull. Severe bleeding from a severed artery during the operation was followed postoperatively by secondary haemorrhage and sepsis. Accepting the defence counsel's ingenious arguments the jury pronounced Kelly not guilty. Stokes's reputation was not damaged permanently and in 1874 John Knott, a medical student, expressed the following opinion: ‘Stokes Jnr is evidently an excellent surgeon as his cases (of amputation, fractures, abscesses, etc.) are almost all progressing favourably. He is also very gentle and tender’ (Lyons, 35). His operation for amputation at the knee joint-a modification of Gritti's procedure-was known to his contemporaries as ‘Stokes's operation’.Stokes was for some time lecturer on surgery in the Carmichael school of medicine, and on 24 December 1872 he was elected professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. When president of the college in 1886-7 he celebrated the jubilee of Queen Victoria with a magnificent banquet. In 1882 he delivered the address on surgery at the jubilee meeting of the British Medical Association held at Worcester, its birthplace. In 1886 he was knighted by the earl of Aberdeen, then lord lieutenant of Ireland. In 1888 he returned to the Meath Hospital as surgeon, resigning a similar position at the Richmond Hospital, and in 1892 he was appointed surgeon-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria in Ireland.Stokes published a life of his father, in the Masters of Medicine series (1898). His Selected Papers on Operative and Clinical Surgery was published posthumously in 1902 and includes articles on hernia, nerve stretching, subdural abscess, and operations on the thyroid gland; the work contained a memoir of the author by Alexander Ogston. Stokes was an advocate of antisepsis. A governor of the Westmorland Lock Hospital, a consulting surgeon to the National Children's Hospital, and a member of the council of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, he also took much interest in the Royal Academy of Medicine and was its secretary for foreign correspondence. He acted at various times as external examiner in surgery at the University of Oxford, and at the Queen's University of Ireland.Early in 1900, though his health had never been robust and he had a tendency to bronchitis, Stokes left Ireland for South Africa, to assume the office of consulting surgeon to the British forces which were then engaged in Natal in the South African War. He endured the hardships of work at military hospitals at Frere Camp, Colenso, and Mooi River. While still actively occupied with the duties of office he fell ill and died of pneumonia on 18 August 1900, at the base hospital at Pietermaritzburg. He was buried two days later in the military cemetery at Fort Napier, Natal.D'A. Power, rev. J. B. Lyons Sources C. A. Cameron, History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, 2nd edn (1916) · A. Ogston, ‘Memoir’, in W. Stokes, Selected papers on operative and clinical surgery, ed. W. Taylor (1902) · J. B. Lyons, ‘John Freeman Knott, 1853-1921’, Long Room, 34 (1989), 30-46 · The Lancet (25 Aug 1900) · BMJ <javascript:;> (1 Sept 1900), 609-12 · CGPLA Eng. & Wales <javascript:;> (1900) Likenesses photograph, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Dublin, Medico-Philosophical Society; repro. in W. Stokes, Selected papers on operative and clinical surgery, ed. W. Taylor (1902) Wealth at death £7896 17s. 7d. (in England): Irish administration sealed in England, 11 Dec 1900, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

1.   Dublin, Ireland (Extracted records)
   FHL Film 101216, 1870/1873.

   Father of STOKES in Birth Extract.

2.   Burke's Irish family records.