by Ernest Clarke

“ He will ever remain a noble figure in the medicine of the nineteenth century, and will live in history as the apostle of sanitation.' The most important feature of Simon's work was his insistence that practice should be based on scientific knowledge, and his recognition of the large field for investigation without reference to immediate practical results. ”

“ Early in life he was taken by his father to Manchester, where both were employed in the farrier's shop of a veterinary surgeon. He subsequently entered the service of a well-known veterinary surgeon of Manchester, John Lawson, who sent him to Dick's College in Edinburgh. He took several medals and prizes, and in 1855 obtained the certificate of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, which was then recognised as a veterinary diploma. ”

“ On his return to England Lawes entrusted him with an investigation at his Millwall factory into the contamination of tartaric acid and citric acid by the vessels used in their preparation; and he found a method for overcoming the evil. In 1894 he was appointed one of the examiners in agriculture for the science and art department, and (for three years) Sibthorpian professor of agriculture at the University of Oxford. Thereafter he retired into private life at Harpenden, busying himself with writings and in charitable and religious work. ”

“ They were unofficially reprinted in 1854, with a preface in which Simon spoke strongly of 'the national prevalence of sanitary neglect,' and demonstrated the urgent need of control of the public health by a responsible minister of state. These views Simon kept steadily before him throughout his official career. The general board of health had been created by government in 1848. It was reconstituted in 1854, and by a further act of 1855 the board was empowered to appoint a medical officer. ”

“ In 1848 Read won the Royal Agricultural Society's prize essay on the farming of South Wales, and in 1854 and 1856 obtained the society's prizes for similar reports on Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He contributed numerous other papers to the Royal Agricultural Society's 'Journal,' and acted frequently as judge at the Royal, Smithfield, Bath and West of England, and other agricultural shows. ”

“ Indeed, on all subjects connected with county government, social reform, local taxation, and agricultural improvement he was regarded as an authority both in and out of parliament. In June 1879 he and his friend Clare Sewell Read [q. v. Suppl. II] went, as assistant commissioners to the Duke of Richmond's royal commission on agriculture, to America and Canada to study agricultural questions there. ”

“ These are reprinted in full in his 'Public Health Reports' (vol. i. 1887) . As medical officer of the privy coimcil he instituted in 1858 annual reports on the working of his department, treating each year special subjects with broad outlook and in terse and graphic phrase. The most important parts were reprinted in 'Public Health Reports' (vol. ii. 1887) . During this period (1858-71) Simon was implicitly trusted by his official superiors, was allowed a free hand, and rallied to his assistance a band of devoted fellow-workers, who helped to make the medical department a real power for good. ”

“ The results of this investigation (embodied in a series of four papers read before the Chemical Society) show careful work and close reasoning. In 1864 he commenced lecturing at Cirencester on the Rothamsted experiments, and it was proposed that Warington should publish a book on the subject. But Dr. Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert [q. V. Suppl. II] , Lawes's collaborator, objected; the book remained in manuscript, and Gilbert and Warington were estranged for life. ”

“ James Bryce, 'no more of a party man than his sense of party loyalty required. His political opinions might be described as half tory, half radical. The tory views and the radical views were not mixed to make what used to be called a liberal conservative, but remained distinct, leaving him a tory in some points, a radical in others' (Reminiscences, introd. p. xliv) .
Pell was an authority on questions of poor law, of which he had a wide experience. He was guardian for his own parish of Hazelbeach as early as 1853. ”

“ Brought up at his father's houses at Pinner Hill and in Harley Street, Pell from 1832 to 1838 was at Rugby school under Arnold. Thence he passed in 1840 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he describes himself as 'idle and unstudious.' He was, however, instrumental in introducing Rugby football to Cambridge. ”

“ He was a member of the Farmers' Club, which he joined in February 1867, becoming a member of the committee in 1881, and chairman in 1888. He was one of the pioneers of the teaching of agriculture at his old university, and was made hon. LL.D. there when the Royal Agricultural Society met at Cambridge in 1894. In his later years he suffered much from deafness and from his lungs, and wintered at Torquay. There he died on 7 April 1907, and was buried at Hazelbeach. ”

“ His ancestors had been tenant-farmers in Norfolk since the end of the sixteenth century. He was educated privately at Lynn, and from the age of fifteen to twenty was learning practical agriculture upon his father's farm. Before he was of age he was managing the large farm of Kilpaison in Pembrokeshire, and was afterwards resident agent on the earl of Macclesfield's Oxfordshire estates. He returned to Norfolk in 1854 and took his father's farm at Plumstead, near Norwich, until 1865, when he succeeded a relative at Honingham Thorpe, and farmed about 800 acres there until Michaelmas 1896. ”

“ Each of the partners had his own sphere, and the influence of the two minds, in themselves essentially different, materially contributed to the success which attended their joint efforts, and made the Rothamsted experiments a standard for reference, and an example wherever agricultural research is attempted' (Dr. J. A. Voelcker in Journal Royal Agricult. Soc. 1901, lxii. 348, 350) . ”

“ From 1859 to 1866 he was parliamentary groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, and thus began a lifelong intimacy with the royal family, especially with the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) , In May 1864 he was appointed, in succession to Colonel Thomas, superintendent of the Prince of Wales's stables, a post which he held until 1885. In 1867 he was appointed extra equerry to the prince, and on the accession of the prince to the throne was made extra equerry to the king. ”

“ He had no issue. Lady Simon was as close a friend of Ruskin as was her husband, and Ruskin famiharly named her his 'dear P.R.S.' (Pre-Raphaelite sister and Sibyl) , or more shortly 'S.' (cf. Lady Burne-Jones, Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, i. 257) .
Sir Richard Douglas Powell, in his presidential address to the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1905 (vol. lxxxviii. p. cxv) , said of Simon that he ' was a man gifted with true genius, and inspired with the love of his kind. ”

“ He was, however, denied the reward of seeing his work carried to its fullest natural conclusion, for though he obtained cultures which converted ammonia into nitrites, and others which produced the further conversion of nitrites into nitrates, and thus showed that nitrification was the work of two different organisms, it was left to Winogradski to isolate the organisms themselves. ”

“ HANBURY, ROBERT WILLIAM (1845–1903) , politician, born on 24 Feb. 1845 at Bodehall House, Tamworth, was only son of Robert Hanbury of Bodehall, a country gentleman of moderate landed estate but of ample means derived chiefly from collieries, by his wife Mary, daughter of Major T. B. Bamford of Wilnecote Hall, Warwickshire. Left an orphan in early childhood, Hanbury was educated at Rugby and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was well known as an 'oar.' He graduated B.A. in 1868 with a second class in literæ humaniores. ”

“ At the end of that year he entered the army veterinary service, and served in the Crimea until the termination of the war. In 1860 he volunteered for the expedition to North China, and was present at the capture of the Taku Forts and the surrender of Pekin, receiving for his services a medal with two clasps. ”

“ He died after a short illness at his London residence at Grosvenor Square on 22 July 1910, and was buried at Elvetham, after cremation at Golder's Green. He was succeeded in the title by his next brother, Lieut.-general Sir Somerset John Gough-Calthorpe (b. 23 Jan. 1831) . He married on 22 July 1869 Maud Augusta Louisa, youngest daughter of the Hon. Octavius Duncombe, seventh son of Charles Duncombe, first Lord Feversham, by whom he had one son, Walter (who predeceased him) , and four daughters. ”

“ He lived on family property at Perry Hall, Staffordshire, serving as high sheriff of that county in 1881. At the general election of 1880 he stood with Major Fred Burnaby [q. v.] as conservative candidate for the undivided borough of Birmingham, near which a part of the family estates lay, but was defeated, P. H. Muntz, John Bright, and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain being returned. ”

“ The current of Simon's thoughts and activities was wholly changed by his appointment in October 1848 as first medical officer of health for the City of London at a salary of 500l. a year (eventually 800l.) . Liverpool was the first town in England to appoint a medical officer of health; London was the second. Simon, whose continued study of pathology at St. ”

“ F.R.C.S. in 1840, when King's College developed a hospital of its own, he was appointed its senior assistant surgeon. He held this post till 1847, when he was made lecturer on pathology at 200l. a year. He eventually became surgeon at St. ”

“ A vigilant and unsparing critic of the estimates even in the conservative parliament of 1886-92, he was regarded at first as something of a free-lance; but when the liberals returned to power in 1892, he and his allies, Mr. ”