Sir Charles Cameron
RCSI is proud to commemorate the centenary of the death of Sir Charles Alexander Cameron (1830-1921).
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A man of mystery

Cameron was a keen record keeper and wrote about many of his personal and professional events in published and unpublished works, including two autobiographies, Reminiscences (1913) and Autobiography (1920).

However, what is noticeable and remarkable about his accounts of his early life, is that they do not seem to altogether match the facts. One wonders what was the reason for these discrepancies – did he consider his family of origin too humble? Or were there other explanations for his obscuring and altering information?

RCSI recently commissioned Eneclann/Irish Family History Centre to conduct an in-depth genealogical study of Cameron and they found ‘a much more complex story than someone trying to scale the social ladder’.

Dublin, born and bred

Charles Alexander Cameron was born in Dublin on 16 July 1830 to Ewen (sometimes Edwin) Cameron and Bridget Smith.

Ewen Cameron was born in Lochabar, Inverness in 1787, and had a short but active military career as a captain in the 42nd Regiment. He served with distinction in the Peninsular War and the expedition against the United States in 1812, and was severely wounded eight times. Due to his injuries, Ewen ‘retired’ at the early age of 28 in 1815.

Little is known about Cameron’s mother – Bridget Smith, a native of Virginia, Co. Cavan – and he rarely mentions her in his writing. He does however, for reasons unknown, reinvent her identity, and refers to her as 'Belinda Smith' in Autobiography. We also know that his mother spoke Irish, and could converse with her husband in his native Scottish Gaelic.

Cameron briefly writes that he had two older siblings – a brother and sister. His brother, John Cameron supposedly enlisted in the Royal Navy and died in the First Opium War in China 1839-42. However, there is no evidence of a 'John Cameron' in the Royal Navy & Royal Marines Service and Pension Records for that period. Cameron indicated in his writings that an older sister married aged 18, and emigrated to the US, unfortunately however, he never names her.

Cameron’s birth is somewhat of a mystery in his own writings. He was born in Dublin but records show that he was born before his parents were married, which would mean that Cameron was born out of wedlock. This undoubtedly would have had serious implications for the future life and opportunities for the young boy.

However, Cameron depicts a happy and innocent childhood in his writing. His small family lived in various locations in Dublin – Magee’s Court in the city centre in the early 1830s, Palmerstown/Chapelizod in the mid 1830s and back to the north side of the city around 1836.

Tragedy strikes

In 1842, mainly due to Ewen Cameron’s poor health, the family moved to Guernsey in the Channel Islands.

However, this move was soon visited by a devastating event for the Cameron family – Ewen Cameron died in 1844, leaving Bridget a widow at the age of 52. After her husband’s death, Bridget Cameron returned to Dublin with Charles, and applied for an army widow’s pension.

Upon their return, Cameron was offered his first job, through a friend of his mother, in a newspaper agency. The fact that Charles was now the family breadwinner, at just 15 years of age, goes some way towards explaining his determination to earn as much money as he could, from as many sources as possible, throughout his long life.

Cameron and RCSI

Cameron had a deep connection with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland throughout his life.

His RCSI journey began in 1868, when he was appointed Professor of Hygiene (Political Medicine) at the College – a role focusing on the science relating to the physical condition of humankind and to the means by which good health may be sustained.

In the summer of that year he delivered a course of 12 lectures on public health, which attracted considerable attention in the press and were attended by large crowds.

On 18 March 1875 Cameron was unanimously elected Professor of Chemistry and Physics at RCSI, a role in which he delivered 60 lectures annually.

He was steadfast in his connection with and devotion to RCSI and in 1884 he was elected Vice-President of the College – and subsequently, in 1885, became President.

It was during Cameron’s tenure as President that women were first admitted to RCSI, when Agnes Shannon enrolled in Chemistry in 1885. This move was a watershed moment for the College and all the Royal Colleges in Great Britain and Ireland, and was a result of a clause in the second supplemental Charter moved by Cameron, then Vice-President.

Some years later in 1893, Emily Winifred Dickson became the first female Fellow of RCSI and Cameron, who then served as Secretary of the College, was one of the signatories to her Fellowship.

Image: Surgeons' Hall on St Stephen's Green, RCSI Heritage Collections.

"I think that his heart was greatly bound up in the old College."

Ernest, only survivor of Sir Charles’ six sons, 24 March 1921

Tricks of the trade

The adulteration of food and drink was widespread for much of the 19th century, and was a major contributor to the national public health problem. Drawing on his vast expertise, Cameron produced ample reports from his analysis of milk, sugar, confectionery, alcohol, medicines and water – all of which were commonly found to be contaminated or adulterated by those supplying and selling them.

Before the German physician Robert Koch had established the germ theory, and while ideas about contagion were still much debated, Cameron was already examining samples for signs that diseases were contagious, and for identifiable particles that might be agents of transmission.

Cameron was one of the first Irish doctors to investigate the transmission of human and animal diseases by the medium of milk and meat. As Cameron saw more diseased cattle being sold for food, he focused on the possibility of cattle disease being passed to humans through meat. His work contributed significantly to the debate on germs and disease during the late 19th century.

Similarly, milk stored in unhygienic conditions often carried typhoid. Cameron conducted numerous investigations of milk, herds and dairies, with one of his papers on an epidemic of fever caused by infected milk declared ‘a classic’ by science journal, The Lancet. It was the first paper of its kind in which higher mathematics were used in proving that the milk was the cause of the epidemic.

Read this article in which historian Juliana Adelman presents Cameron as a zoonotic pioneer in a disease-ridden Dublin.

Image: Asylum Yard, Mark's Court, Dublin. Courtesy of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland

A family man

Charles Cameron wrote in detail of his close family life and his diaries show that, although his professional life was of great importance to him, his family was his bedrock.

On 16 October 1862, in St Mary’s Church of Ireland in Donnybrook, he married Lucie Frances McNamara, the only daughter of a Dublin solicitor and cousin of playwright W.G. Wills. This was a doubly significant day for Cameron, as it was the same day that he was appointed analyst ‘of all articles of Food and Drink purchased within the City of Dublin’.

Charles and Lucie had eight children and were dedicated parents. Alas, at the age of 53, Cameron was left a widower, with seven children ranging in age from one-year-old to 16, when Lucie died of heart disease.

The Cameron children

Sadly Cameron’s family life was touched by tragedy more than once. Out of his seven children, only three survived to old age.

The eldest of the Cameron children, Charles was in the army and throughout his career served in various battalions ─ the Enniskillen Fusiliers, the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the 3rd Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders. Tragically, Charlie died in a boating accident on the River Shannon on 3 January 1913 at the age of 47.

Cameron’s second son, Ewen died before his 8th birthday from scarlet fever.

Edwin, Cameron’s third son followed his father and worked in the Corporation laboratories as his private assistant. However, along with his younger brother Mervyn, Edwin contracted phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis) at a young age. When neither son's condition improved, Cameron sent them to the Canary Islands in 1894 in the hopes of improving their health. Edwin’s condition deteriorated faster than his brother’s and in April 1895 he died at the age of 24. Mervyn travelled back to Dublin to be sent on two further trips in the hope of recovering his health. Unfortunately, he too died of the condition in January 1899 at just 23 years of age.

According to Cameron’s diaries, it appears that Lucie – his eldest daughter replaced her mother as his companion at official functions. Lucie went on to marry John Denison Gerrard (Denny) when she was 42 and the couple resided in Belmullet, Co. Mayo where Denny had been appointed Resident Magistrate.

Cameron’s second and youngest daughter, Helena married Professor Rupert Stanley, a Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering in 1903. The couple went to live in Belfast, and had three sons – Rupert, Vivian and Mervyn – who gave Cameron a great deal of happiness in his later years.

Cameron’s fourth son, Ernest also followed in his father’s footsteps as an analyst and worked alongside him for many years. However, Ernest’s true passion lay in the arts. By 1913 he had left his job in the Corporation and went to Paris, presumably to pursue his singing career; he returned to Dublin after six months. In 1916, things took a turn for Ernest and he was committed to a mental asylum in Dublin. He eventually recovered however and was discharged. When Charles Cameron died in 1921, Ernest was his only surviving son.

Ernest died on 13 May 1949 aged 79. His death cert records that he died in Grangegorman Mental Hospital, indicating that unfortunately his mental health issues recurred throughout his life.

The youngest of the Cameron children, Ewen, was just a year old when his mother died. Shortly after his older brother's (Mervyn) death, Ewen fell ill with pneumonia. However, unlike Mervyn, Ewen made a full recovery. Unfortunately, Ewen’s life came to a tragic end in 1915. On 27 August, while travelling on a train between Bray and Greystones, Ewen ‘went to the lavatory and shot his dear head with his revolver’; he was 33-years-old.

A masonic interest

Despite the challenges of his family life, Cameron had a passion for life and was involved with many clubs and societies.

Significant sections of Cameron's Reminiscences and Autobiography are dedicated to his membership of the Freemasons, which seems to have filled a real need in his personal life, as well as helping him in his career and professional circles.

Cameron’s Masonic life began in 1858 when he was initiated into Fidelity Lodge 125, Dublin. He went on to join Lodge 25, Dublin in 1866 and was its Secretary for 50 years. He first took Office in Grand Lodge, the Order’s governing body, in 1870, becoming Deputy Grand Master in 1911.

In some ways his Masonic associations acted as another family, giving him encouragement and support, a forum to express his witticisms and be praised for them, a place where his talents were recognised and rewarded, and an inexhaustible source of occasions for congenial gathering.

The Order grew and prospered in his time – two Lodges were named for him: Sir Charles Cameron Lodge No. 72 in Dublin in 1907, and Lodge No. 353 in Belfast in 1913.

By the time of his resignation in 1920, aged 90, due to failing physical health, he was recognised as a Freemason all over the world. He was honoured and respected within Masonic circles and without. His successor talked about his possession in a most extraordinary degree of the gift of personal magnetism and was quite sure that nobody ever quarrelled with him, and if they did for not more than a minute or two and then they were sorry for it afterwards.

A club gentleman

Cameron equated having a social life as an important element for one’s happiness, health and well-being.

Cameron’s diaries record a hectic social life; a constant round of balls, musical evenings and visits to the theatre. He entertained regularly at home and often did so ostentatiously.

An ardent admirer of drama and a friend of leading actors, Cameron became a noted theatre critic, writing for his own paper the Agricultural Review and The Irish Times.

He was also a member of the Savage Club in London – a gentlemen’s club with members drawn from the fields of art, drama, law, literature, music and science – and was asked to preside over several of their Saturday night dinners.

Eager to establish a club in Dublin on the lines of the Savage Club, Cameron founded and was president of the fashionable Corinthian Club in 1899 which remained a permanent feature in Dublin’s social circles.

The club entertained a wide variety of guests, including three Lord Lieutenants, Winston Churchill, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Chief Secretary Gerald Balfour, John McCormack and world-renowned opera singer Signor Enrico Caruso.

Freeman of Dublin

Cameron was made an Honorary Freeman of his native city on 24 February 1911. The ceremony took place at a meeting of the Corporation, presided over by the Lord Mayor.

Alderman Thomas Kelly, leader of the Sinn Fein party in the Corporation at the time, remarked that he 'found him (Cameron) to be a man whose earnest wish was to lift the city from its notoriety of having the highest death-rate in Europe … it was not because of Sir Charles’s charity, not because he was a Unionist or a Protestant, but because he believed Sir Charles had done more than a man’s part trying to combat disease in Dublin, that they wished to honour him'.

Lasting legacy

Any consideration of Victorian Dublin, its people and development, inevitably involves Sir Charles Cameron.

His breadth of specialist knowledge, his skill at making connections and improvising, and his relentless drive to improve the life and lot of the city of Dublin and its citizens feature still. From slum clearance to the building of new houses, filth-ridden yards to homes with toilets and running water, the possibility for cleanliness meant the possibility of lives less burdened with disease.

Cameron’s proactive methods undoubtedly extended the scope of the offices he held. He was appointed the second only Medical Officer of Health for Dublin, having also worked alongside his predecessor Professor ED Mapother, so that for the future of such posts the parameters were broadened to their maximum – everything in the interest of the people came within the remit.

Another treasure trove left to us by Cameron are his writings – both professional and personal. The data he recorded illuminate aspects of life, death, disease and its conquest. The development of, and his contribution to, the emerging specialty of public health are all there. His diaries, publications and memorabilia are in the RCSI Library and Heritage Collections- RCSI/IP/Cameron’.

He is remembered and immortalised in the street, square and housing estate in Dublin 8 that are named in his honour, and in the immortal words of James Joyce in Ulysses: ‘The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and Sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and there was music.’

Image: Marble bust of Sir Charles Cameron by Sir Thomas Farrell, RCSI, July 1893.