Dr. Thomas Robertson was born in 1823 in Aberdeen Scotland to Robert Robertson and Helen Robertson nee Watt. Dr. Robertson became a long-term resident of Parramatta and is considered to be one of Parramatta’s earliest doctors to make his medical profession a full time job. Dr. Robertson married Parramatta born Mary Elizabeth Walker (1826-1883) on the 26 May, 1848 in a Wesleyan Chapel in Parramatta and they raised their family in Parramatta.
Dr. Robertson was to become significant in the formation and success of the Parramatta District Hospital. Having already had a successful medical career which included contributing the main article to the first issue of the Australian Medical Journal in 1846, Dr. Robertson in 1848 alongside Dr. Hill became responsible for the patients at the fledgling hospital. The first committee meeting invited Drs. Hill and Robertson to superintend the hospital and they accepted. When Dr. Hill died in 1850, Dr. Robertson also helped with a bequest of three hundred pounds. Dr. Thomas Robertson acted as an Honorary Medical Officer at Parramatta District Hospital performing surgeries with a strong emphasis on strangulated hernias. He wrote an extensive article titled “Strangulated Inguinal Hernia” and the first surgery he performed was only the third case of surgery being performed for strangulated hernias in the colony.
The author of the authoritative Medical Practice in Old Parramatta, Keith Sigismund Macarthur Brown, said of Dr. Thomas Robertson:
“The Parramatta Hospital survived the many unforeseen dangers and perilous experiences of its early infancy in a manner quite consistent with the times; but it was largely due to the unremitting attention and tender care of Dr. Thomas Robertson that this critical period of its early existence as a public institution was successfully passed without serious detriment to its future future growth and development.”
He continues:
“In spite of its early vicissitudes, the hospital carried on a beneficent work for the sick and suffering poor of a large and populous district. A medical report submitted by Dr. Robertson to the first annual general meeting contained a formidable list of diseases which had been treated with success, and a plain statement of fact concerning the unpalatable subject of an exceedingly high rate of mortality which was satisfactorily accounted for, however in the concluding paragraph he stated: It is melancholy to state that very few patients solicit hospital aid until they have derived no benefit from other sources and their disease progressed so far as to render cure impossible; thus making the institution a receptacle for the dead previous to internment.”
Two years after the death of John Hodges in 1849 the title and allotment of Brislington was consolidated in 1851 with the purchase by George Rattray. The house was leased to Dr. Thomas Robertson from August 1851 and he used Brislington as both his home and medical practice. Dr. Robertson moved from his quarters from the cottage within the Parramatta District Hospital grounds to Brislington bringing his possessions which included a patient’s skeleton that had been donated to Dr. Robertson in gratitude of his care.
Immediately prior to Dr. Robertson moving from his cottage in the Parramatta District Hospital grounds to Brislington the following advertisement was placed in The Sydney Morning Herald:
“R. ROBERTSON returns his sincere thanks to the inhabitants of Parramatta, its vicinity, and Liverpool, for the very extensive patronage they have bestowed upon him during the last eight years, and their kind unsolicited offer to patronise him in future.
Dr. R. corresponds regularly with the most celebrated professors of four Colleges and Universities, two in Scotland, one in England, and one in Ireland, from whom he had the pleasure of receiving instruction while a pupil of his late brother and the late celebrated Robert Liston, and has received letters from them requesting him to accept presents of the latest and best scientific works on medicine which they will forward by every opportunity, as a small token of the high esteem and regard they have for his welfare, and to enable him to keep pace with the rapid progression of medical science which is daily taking place throughout the globe.
Dr. R. received the first present by the Hero of London, from Dr. Dickie, Professor of Natural History, Zoology, and Botany, Queen's College and University, Belfast, Ireland.
Dr. R. has removed from the cottage adjoining Dr. Hill's residence, to the one lately occupied by the Rev. John Tait and James Oakes, Esq., George-street, on the left hand going from Mrs. Nash's towards the Government Domain.”
Keith Sigismund Macarthur Brown noted that:
“It was well that he lived close by, as the institution claimed his attention at all hours of the day and night”,
and that:
“from the day in August 1851 when Dr. Thomas Robertson moved his quarters from the cottage within the hospital grounds to become a tenant of the red-brick house that Hodges built, the old home on the corner came to occupy a warm place in the hearts of the townspeople, and to figure prominently in the medical annals of Parramatta.”
A report by the Parramatta Correspondent of the Herald not long after Dr. Robertson moved to Brislington offers an insight into the nature of the work that he performed whilst living and working in Brislington:
“Mr. Plunkett, junior, of Dural, having gone into the bush for the purpose of felling a tree, which he completed, when the tree came in contact with another, thereby throwing it aside, and striking Mr. P. on the head which brought him to the ground, breaking the top of his shoulder blade, as he fell on the teeth of a cross-cut saw. His wife went in search of him, and found him senseless, when he was conveyed to Doctor Robertson's.”
Dr. Thomas Robertson retired in 1857 due to serious health concerns, and was replaced by the new tenant Dr. Walter Brown. He died at 53 years of age on the 17 June 1877 in Parramatta. Dr. Thomas Robertson is best described by Keith Brown in his book Medical Practice in Old Parramatta as having:
“an unusual keenness in attention to detail, as well as an insatiable desire to gain a deeper insight into the aetiology of disease. He knew, therefore, that his humble contribution in the interests in Science would be utilized to the fullest possible extent, and that his internal economy would be the subject of an intensive study which might produce results of inestimable benefits to his future patients and perhaps to the human race.”
Caroline Finlay, Regional Studies Facilitator, Parramatta Heritage Centre, City of Parramatta, 2021
References
Brown, K. M. (1937). Medical practice in old Parramatta: an historical review of village doctoring in the colony of New South Wales. Sydney: A. & R.
McClymont, J. (1999). The Parramatta Hospitals. Retrieved from https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/blog/2018/07/20/the-parramatta-hospitals
Doctors at Parramatta in the early days. (1938, October 26). The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, p. 20. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article104974494
Advertising (1851, August 9). The Sydney Morning Herald, p. 1. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12929311
Sydney News. (1851, September 17). The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, p. 4. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article680186
Ancestry.com. (1997-2021). Australian Births, Marriages and Deaths. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.