John Davidson (Royal Navy officer)

John Davidson (died 31 January 1881) was an English surgeon who served as Inspector-General of the Royal Navy and was Honorary Physician to Queen Victoria.

John Davidson

Career edit

Davidson joined the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon on 29 July 1839, serving on HMS Nimrod when it sailed from Plymouth to the East Indies.[1] He served as surgeon-superintendent on the Lord Auckland from September 1852 to April 1853 when the ship carried convicts from Cork to Van Diemen's Land, arriving on 29 January 1853.[2]

As a deputy inspector of hospitals, he was director of the naval hospital at Therapia during the Crimean War,[3][4] sailing on the Royal Albert in 1855.[5] During the 1860s, he was medical inspector at Greenwich Hospital, London.[6] He was appointed Inspector-General of Hospitals and Fleets in July 1866.[7]

Davidson was appointed Honorary Physician to Queen Victoria in July 1874, succeeding Sir Alexander Nisbet.[8]

He died, aged 63, in 1881 and was buried in the Greenwich Hospital's cemetery (today East Greenwich Pleasaunce).[9]

References edit

  1. ^ "The Naval Surgeon". The Mid Victorian Royal Navy. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  2. ^ "John Davidson R.N. - Convict Ship Surgeon-Superintendent". Free Settler or Felon. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  3. ^ Helmstadler, Carol (2019). Beyond Nightingale: Nursing on the Crimean War battlefields. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526140531.
  4. ^ Shepherd, John A (1991). The Crimean Doctors: A History of the British Medical Services in the Crimean War, Volume 1. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 550. ISBN 9780853231677.
  5. ^ "H.M. Ships and their officers: "Mediterranean" from the Navy List, corrected to the 20th of June, 1855". Crimean War Research Society. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  6. ^ "Royal Navy Invalids and Pensioners 1866 & 1868". Ancestral Indexes. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  7. ^ "No. 23134". The London Gazette. 6 July 1866. p. 3872.
  8. ^ "Naval Medical Appointments". British Medical Journal. 25 July 1874. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  9. ^ "EAST GREENWICH PLEASAUNCE, GREENWICH, LONDON, ENGLAND". Wartime Memorials. Retrieved 17 May 2020.