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78
Strict allegiance to and the cons cientious performance of his official
duties as required by the regulations often meant the arousal of conflict
between public and private interests . To care for an assigned servant
properly, to say nothing of asking for the required payment , was to
invoke the hostility and anger of the master .
Hall, who took his official duties serious ly, acting strictly
and independently, did not stop to consider whether his actions were
agreeable to the Police authorities or helpful to his own private
interests .
Angered by his refusal to consider their pos ition more
important than a prisoner 's, some Bothwellans , who lacked true
unders tanding of the situation or bore a personal grudge against Hall ,
found other means to satisfy their medical needs , namely unqualified
persons only too ready to engage in irregular practice - people like
Wigmore , the Prisoner Dispenser , Robinson, and others .
More serious still
was the encroachment of another surgeon, D.E. Stodart, from the Green Ponds
area.
Stodart , the son of an old and well respected colonist, after
completing his medical studies in England, arrived in Launceston in the
ship "Wave" in early Septemb er 1840 .
Returning to Hobart Town , he
established a medical practice at 62 Macquarie Street in November 1840 ,
advertising himself particularly as an accoucheur . 40 His arrival was
welcomed in the colony as there appeared to be a shortage of doctors owing
to the death of some and the departure of others to the mainland .
However , Stodart found, like many others before him , that there
were too many practising in Hobart Town already for him to make a living .
He sought employment with the Government Medical Staff which appointed him
to the Green Ponds district .
There, too, he found things financially
difficult , and was prepared to travel long distances to attend private
patients in areas not his own , sometimes doing so to the neg lect of
patients in his own district .
As even Hall's worst enemies could never
accuse him of neglect , want of capacity , or any professional impropriety ,
the engagement by some Bothwell residents of Stodart to attend them was
an act of pure spite and hostility against him .
For some time Hall
endured the situation , extremely reluctant to seek the protection of the
Principal Medical Officer against a fellow surgeon .
But when Stodart
was summoned eighteen miles to attend Barrow 's wife in her accouchment ,
almost on Hal l's doorstep , he fe lt that the situation had become
40
Colonial Times , Sept . 15, Nov . 17, 1840 .