William Reginald Grove
William Reginald Grove | |
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| Born | 13 January 1869 St Ives, Huntingdonshire |
| Died | 29 November 1948 (aged 79) St Ives, Huntingdonshire |
| Nationality | English |
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| Occupation | General Practitioner |
| Known for |
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| Spouse(s) | Hilda Clara Stevenson m 1897, daughter of Sr Thomas and Lady Agnes Stevenson. |
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Reginald Grove MB MD (1869-1948) was a country doctor in the market town of St Ives in Huntingdonshire for 54 years. In addition to his service to the local community he made a valued contribution to general medical knowledge through his clinical studies and findings published in a number of medical journals.
Life
Grove was educated as a chorister at King’s College Choir school, training under the organist and composer Dr Arthur Mann and taught by the Vice Provost Augustus Austen-Leigh with whom he later became friends. He then spent five years at Uppingham School during the headship of the renowned Edward Thring. The diaries[1] that he kept form a unique insight into life as a schoolboy under Thring which have contributed to a greater understanding of this giant of Victorian education.[2]
Grove studied at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, captained the college rowing eight in his last year and edited the first publications of the Cambridge University Association of Brass Collectors (now the Monumental Brass Society).[3]
At Guy’s Medical School, Grove was trained by a number of respected consultants such as Walter Jacobson, and Sir Henry Howse and was given lectures in medical jurisprudence and chemistry by Sir Thomas Stevenson who was famed for his expert witness testimony in a number of notorious murder trials. Invited to Stevenson’s home as a young student, Grove met his daughters, and married one of them, Hilda Clara, whom he married in 1897.
After qualifying, Grove took over his father’s general practice during the latter’s ill health and subsequent death. As the Medical Officer of Health for St Ives and Medical Officer for the St Ives Workhouse Grove made his mark on the life of his community.
He was a regular contributor to medical publications on a number of medical matters based on his observations of patients: his article on the Infectivity of Inherited Syphilis was published in the British Medical Journal in 1906[4] and resulted in a series of correspondence.[5] His other contributions in that publication, and others were on treatment for pulmonary tuberculous[6] ’Calcium Deficiencies: their treatment by parathyroid,’’[7] ‘’Hydropericardium in the diagnosis of coronary thrombosis’’ (jointly)[8] and ‘Rex v. Donnellan, 1781’[9] which dealt with the trial of John Donellan for poisoning Sir Theodosius Edward Allesley Boughton in 1780.
His particular interest was Graves’ disease, on which he submitted a thesis for his MD in 1907.[10] He corresponded on this subject in the British Medical Journal later that year following an article by another doctor the findings on which he disagreed.[11]
He presented his findings, and that of a colleague, Dr Howard William Coupland Vines, on the Etiology and Treatment of Varicose Ulcers at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1921. Vines was a Beit Memorial Research Fellow. Their work was published later that year in the British Medical Journal.[12]
At the Royal Society of Medicine Annual Meeting in 1923, Grove presented his findings on organotherapy. His talk was then printed in the Society’s annual proceedings.[13]
Grove was President of the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Medical Association from 1914-1918 and gave a number of presentations based on his own clinical observations.[14]
He developed a keen interest in stereoscopic photography. In addition to being a member of the United Stereoscopic Society, Grove was elected in 1925 as President of The Stereoscopic Society and served in this role for 23 years until his death in 1948. He was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society. He was a regular exhibitor at their annual exhibitions in the years up to the Second World War and became well known for the quality and composition of his work, particularly his character studies of country folk, most of whom were his patients. Examples of his photography are now held in the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Huntingdonshire County Archives, Huntingdon.
Grove was a Christian whose faith shaped his life. He served as a churchwarden at All Saints Church in St Ives for many years and was a member of the Church of England’s Men’s Society .and President of the Ely branch. Writing to one of his daughters two and a half years before his death, when his health was beginning to fail, he said that he hoped that he would be able to finish the work that the Lord had given him to do.[15] The Vicar of All Saints, Revd Alex Lawson, writing Grove’s obituary in the parish magazine said that ‘he had no fear of death for he regarded it as a Christian should, as a transition to a fuller and more perfect life’. He concluded that he ‘was an excellent Christian whose religion was very real and sincere, and it formed the basis of his long life.'[16]
Besides his clinical contributions to medical practice, he was remembered by his patients with great affection[17] and respect as a reassuring family doctor.[18]
The family documents which relate to his life and a large collection of his stereoscopic photographs are housed in the Huntingdonshire County Archives, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, England.
Bibliography
- Flower, Peter, A Schoolboy’s life at Uppingham in Victorian Times. Uppingham Local History Study Group Website (2022)
- Flower, Peter, An Early Enthusiast: Reginald Grove Part 1. Monumental Brass Society Bulletin 149 (2022)
- Flower, Peter, An Early enthusiast: Reginald Grove Part 2. Monumental Brass Society Bulletin 150 (2022)
- Flower, Peter, House Calls of a Victorian Country Doctor. Records of Huntingdonshire. Volume 4 No 6 (2025)
- Flower, Peter, New Light on Dorothy’s Childhood. Side Lights on Sayers, Volume LXV111 (2023) The Dorothy L. Sayers Society
- Flower, Peter, Rutland’s monumental brasses and a Victorian schoolboy’s hobby. Rutland Record 43 - Journal of the Rutland Local History & Record Society (2023)
- Flower, Peter, The Life and Times of a Victorian Country Doctor. A portrait of Reginald Grove. Volume 1: life at home (2021) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-207-9
- Flower, Peter, The Life and Times of a Victorian Country Doctor. A portrait of Reginald Grove. Volume 2: life at school (2021) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-206-2
- Flower, Peter, The Life and Times of a Victorian Country Doctor. A portrait of Reginald Grove. Volume 3: life as a medical man (2022) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-495-0
- Flower, Peter, The Enduring Photographic Legacy of Reginald Grove. - A gifted Amateur Stereoscopic Photographer (2025) Brown Dog Books ISBN 978-1-83952-921- 4
- Venn, John, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge University Press) Part 11 Volume 111 (1947).
References
- ↑ Uppingham School Archives, copy diaries 1881-1887 held
- ↑ Smith, W. David, Stretching their Bodies (The History of Physical Education) (1974) David & Charles, 1974 p.29 Tozer, Malcolm, Edward Thring’s Theory, Practice and Legacy: Physical Education in Britain since 1800 (2019) Cambridge Scholars Publishing. USNB (10) 1-5275-2818-9. ISBN (13) 978-1-5275-2818-5. pp 193-207; 224 and 260.
- ↑ Transactions of the Cambridge University Association of Brass Collectors (Society) Volume 1 p.16
- ↑ British Medical Journal 16 June 1906 pp 1428-9
- ↑ British Medical Journal 23 June 1906 p 1502.
- ↑ British Medical Journal 18 December 1909 p.1781
- ↑ British Medical Journal 20 May 1922 pp 791–795
- ↑ The Practitioner 1929 reported in the Medical Directory for 1942 for Grove
- ↑ Medical Legal and Criminal Review Volume 2 issue 2 1934
- ↑ The typewritten dissertation is held in the Huntingdonshire County Archives, Huntingdon. Huntingdonshire
- ↑ The Lancet 23 November 1907 p.1495. Also. 30 November 1907
- ↑ The British Medical Journal 29 October 1921
- ↑ The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 1923, Volume XV1 (Section of Therapeutics and Pharmacology).
- ↑ The subjects covered were parathyroid, hydropericardium, Addison’s Disease, calcium in haemorrhage, and the implications of iodine given internally
- ↑ Letter to Slyvia Grove 16 June 1946
- ↑ All Saint’s Parish Magazine January 1948
- ↑ For recollections of two patients see: Denis, Father - Father Algy (1964) Hodder and Stoughton Ltd pp. 102 -105 and Pratt, Edith, As if it was Yesterday (1978) The Grasshopper Press, Fenstanton, Hunts. p.48; pp 62-75.
- ↑ British Medical Journal Obituary 25 December 1948
External links
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