biographies

Maund, John (1823 - 1858)

M.D.

Born
12 March 1823
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England
Died
3 April 1858
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Medical practitioner, Gynaecologist and Obstetrician

Details

Transcription of item written by Dr Colin Macdonald and published in "The Book of Remembrance", The Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, 1956.


JOHN MAUND
(1856 - 1858)

John Maund, a native of Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, was born on 12th March 1823, 12 years before Melbourne was founded. At Bromsgrove, a small market town 13 miles N.E. of the county city of Worcester, is a well known Public School dating from 1527, which Maund’s brothers attended, but he himself received tuition in the nearby larger town of Kidderminster, with his early education receiving many interruptions because of - in the medical idiom of the day - a delicate constitution.

John was the eldest of the three sons of Benjamin and Sarah Maund. His father, a remarkable man and a world famous botanist - a Fellow of the Linnaen Society - is described thus on a memorial tablet in the Bromsgrove Parish Church - "In memory of Benjamin Maund F.L.S. 1790-1864, Author, Printer and Producer of 'Maund’s Botanic Garden' and other world famed works, distinguished by comprehensive knowledge, artistic skill and exalted genius; he lived and laboured in Bromsgrove for nearly 50 years, and rendered lasting honour to the town of his adoption".

So John Maund inherited a love of learning and accurate scholarship.

On choosing medicine as a career, John was apprenticed to a surgeon named Welsby at Prescot, the watch-making town in Lancashire, and later studied medicine at the University of Glasgow, where he won numerous prizes. In his twenty-first year he became an assistant surgeon at St. Pancreas (London) Infirmary, at the same time studying for the Diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons, which he received on 7th August 1845. He then spent a year attending hospitals and lectures in Paris.

In June 1847, he received the Diploma of the Apothecaries’ Society, London, and soon afterwards started private practice at Harlow, Essex, having just taken the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, University of St. Andrews.

Never robust, ill health caused the sale of this East Anglian practice, and in 1851, the first year of Victoria’s gold rush, Dr. Maund, then aged 28, decided to emigrate to Victoria. Before doing so, he was awarded the certificates of the Royal College of Chemistry, London, as well as that of the Polytechnic Chemical School. At this time his inclination was to follow the practice of analytical chemistry in Victoria, feeling this would be more suited to his health than the rigours of colonial medical practice.

So Dr. Maund and one of his three sisters arrived at Melbourne in the ship "Janet Mitchell" on 3rd January 1853, the passengers presenting him with a silver tankard in appreciation of his professional services on the voyage. Some of these passengers continued to visit him in Melbourne, and he eventually decided to resume medical practice, and forego the analytical chemistry. His first rooms were in a small house in 189 Lonsdale Street East. He practiced there until May 1857, when he removed to a house built for him in Latrobe Street East.

In April 1857, he was admitted to the ad eundem degree of Doctor of Medicine, University of Melbourne. He was Victoria’s first Government Analyst, and in that position made many official investigations, in particular into Melbourne’s water supply, recently established at the Yan Yean Reservoir.

Dr. Maund developed a large private practice, especially in the newer suburbs rapidly growing around Melbourne. Cases that came to his notice aroused an ambition to establish an institution where the poorer women of the community could be confined in hygienic conditions, and in this aspiration he found a ready supporter and an enthusiastic sympathiser in Dr. Richard Thomas Tracy, practicing not far away in Brunswick St., Fitzroy. Maund was 33 at the time, Tracy 29. The first hospital was known as "The Lying-In Hospital" in leased premises at 41 Albert St. East Melbourne, prior to the opening of the permanent hospital in Carlton in 1858. The situation of this 41 Albert St. lies a little to the right of the Baptist Church House and about opposite the rear of St. Peter’s Church of England.

The sound establishment of this Lying-In Hospital was greatly furthered by the interest and collaboration of the then Anglican Dean of Melbourne - Dr. Macartney. In August 1856, the attention of Dr. Macartney was drawn by a group of ladies to the necessity of establishing a Lying-In Hospital in this city. He accordingly convened a meeting at the Deanery for the purpose of considering the best steps to be taken to secure the establishment of such an Institution. At this meeting a Ladies’ Committee was formed, and the Dean undertook to apply to the Committee of the Melbourne Hospital to enquire if they were willing to establish such an Institution in connection with that Hospital. The next meeting of the Ladies’ committee was fixed to 8th August, to be held at the Deanery, when it was hoped a reply from the Melbourne Hospital would have been received.

During the interval between the first and second meetings, it became known to some of the ladies that Dr. Maund and Dr. Tracy, having also felt the great need for a Lying-In Hospital, were then in treaty for a what was described as a commodious and well-situated house in Albert Street, East Melbourne, and these gentlemen were determined on their own responsibility to set such an Institution on foot, trusting to the support of the public to maintain so necessary a project when its benefits became apparent. Maund and Tracy were accordingly invited to attend the second meeting at the Deanery. They did so, and the Dean reporting that the Melbourne Hospital was not at present able to help, it was agreed that the object in view would best be achieved by co-operating with Maund and Tracy.

So a third meeting was held at the Deanery on 11th August and another on 14th August at the house which had then been hired by Maund and Tracy, to judge the suitability of this building, and to further consider the undertaking. A new Committee of 20 ladies was then formed, a President was chosen, and an Honorary Treasurer and an Honorary Secretary appointed. Mrs. Perry, wife of the Bishop of Melbourne, was the first President, Mrs. Jennings, of Alma Road, St. Kilda, the first Honorary Treasurer, and Mrs. Tripp, of Gertrude Street Collingwood, the first Honorary Secretary.

The first patients were admitted on 19th August 1856 and in December of that year, when the first report was presented to subscribers - (92 in number), the Hospital had 20 inpatients and 101 outpatients.

A subscriber of one guinea annually received tickets admitting 12 outpatients to the benefits of the Hospital; a subscriber of two guineas, 12 outpatients and one inpatient; while a subscriber of five guineas, 24 outpatients and three inpatients.

Dean Macartney’s name should therefore be honourable remembered in connection with the Hospital establishment. Son of an Irish Baronet, a graduate of Arts and Doctor of Divinity of Trinity College Dublin, he accompanied Bishop Perry to Melbourne in 1847, and died here in 1894, at the ripe old age of 95, greatly respected by clergy and laity alike. Even at the age of 90, he could still preach a vigorous sermon. When St. Paul’s Cathedral was opened in 1891, its acoustics were very poor, defeating all preachers except the aged Irish Dean, for only his resonant voice could be heard at the far end of the huge bluestone edifice.

Another non-medical man whose name should be remembered was Mr. Richard Grice - a Melbourne merchant, a fellow churchman and personal friend of Tracy. Grice was foremost in procuring funds sufficient to entitle the young Hospital to Government support, and to the grant of two acres of land in Madeline Street, Carlton, on which it now stands. That portion of Swanston Street which flanks the Hospital on the west was then known as Madeline Street.

Maund and Tracy were thus the medical founders of our Women’s Hospital and were its first honorary Medical officers – the Hospital Committee granting the appointments for the lifetimes of these two gentlemen. Not until 1884 was the title changed from Lying-In Hospital to Women’s Hospital, and to Royal Women’s Hospital 70 years later.

John Maund lived only two years after the Lying-In Hospital was established, but this was long enough for him to see it well founded, and the usefulness he had dreamed for it, acknowledged. In point of fact, Maund died on 3rd April 1858, just before the Carlton building was completed, at his home in Latrobe Street East, at the early age of 35, after a residence in the Colony of only five years. He lies buried in the Melbourne General cemetery. The description of his illness suggests it may have been typhoid fever, common enough at that time in Melbourne.

Maund seemingly was a simple man, unobtrusive, gentle in manner - one who had quickly gained the confidence and esteem both of his patients and the general public. He was an original member of, and amongst the most enthusiastic workers for, the Medical Society, and was the originator and first editor of its Journal called "The Australian Medical Journal". His friend Tracy was the first Treasurer. Several articles appear under Maund’s name in this Journal, one being an analysis of the statistics of the Lying-In Hospital for the first twelve months of its existence.

On his death - it will be remembered he was only 35 - it was written "that the Colony of Victoria had never before been called to mourn the loss of one who had so much distinguished himself by his attainments in every branch of medicine, and who was not more distinguished for his abilities than for his kind and amiable disposition, which had endeared him to all who knew him".

He died unmarried. His sister returned to England, and the family had no further connection with Australia.

His portrait in oils, painted posthumously in Melbourne by Nicholas Chevalier, hangs in the Medical Society’s Hall in East Melbourne. His sister gave it to the National Gallery of Victoria, whose Trustees have lent it in perpetuity, to the Victoria Branch of the British Medical Association.* After his death the Committee of the Lying-In Hospital set aside a sum of money for the painting of this portrait, and for a mural tablet. This tablet lay for many years in an obscure corner of the Hospital until unearthed by Mr. James Cunningham, the Manager and Secretary, in 1955.

A stained glass window, representing St. Paul and St. Luke, is a memorial to Maund in the chancel of the Parish Church at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire and on the window is the inscription "In memory of John Maund M.D. who died at Melbourne, Victoria, 1857, and was interred there in the General Cemetery". This date we know should be 1858.

There is ample evidence that Maund was a man of the first quality, one of the many educated Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen of the early Victorian era who brought to the Antipodes qualities of honesty, sincerity and Christian faith which provided a splendid heritage on which the future Commonwealth of Australia could be soundly built.

*The painting is now on loan to the Royal Women’s Hospital where it was hung for many years in the Board Room and more recently in the Tracy Maund Museum.
Archivist’s note, 2006.

Archival/Heritage Resources

Royal Women's Hospital Archives

  • Book of Remembrance, 1956 - 1975; Royal Women's Hospital Archives [ Details... ].

Images

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Maund, John
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Prepared by: Robyn Waymouth

Created: 31 July 2006, Last modified: 26 November 2006