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80
i
I.
I
we at present experience from the
Medical Officer having prohibited
Assistant Surgeon from practising
this district .
fact of the Principal
any other District
in private fami lies in
We desire most respectfully to represent to His Excellency
that the present District Assistant Surgeon (Mr E.S. Hall)
has rendered himself so extremely obnoxious to us as to
preclude the possibility of our admitting him with the
slightest degree of confidence into our families . We are
therefore entirely deprived of all medical attendance , it
being in the power of few to obtain such aid from Hobart Town .
Therefore , we feel confident that His Excellency will afford
us some relief, which relief we desire most respectfully to
ob serve can only be effectually obtained by the removal of
Mr E.S. Hall to another district .
When Hall discovered that three men, Philip and William Russell
of Denniston and Horne, whom he had always regarded as his friends , had
signed the petition and that their names were being used as an inducement
to others to sign, he was grievous ly distressed and wrote to each of them
to seek the reason for their action .
His letter to the Rus sells
revealed the shock, sorrow and uncertainty which he felt .
Gentlemen,
Bothwell,
17th June, 1843 .
I feel much pained to find your names have been attached
to a Petition praying for my removal from my appointment on
the grounds of want of confidence in my professional ab ilities ,
etc. etc. As I am utterly unconscious of ever having given
either of you the slightest grounds for such an opinion (the
extent of my professional services to Mr Wi l liam Russell having
been the extraction of a tooth) I think there must be some
mistake in the matter. I am naturally extremely jealous of
the slightest aspersion on my professional acquirements and
conduct , and therefore will feel extremely ob liged if you will
favour me with your reasons for subscribing to a document so
calculated to wound my profes sional reputation - such conduct
on the part of my open and avowed enemies can easily be understood,
but not so on the part of those whom I have ever hitherto deemed
friends - I can easily conceive you may think the change prayed
for desirable on other grounds and I assure you I shall not feel
annoyed at your expressing them - I did myself express to you
some time ago that fact that I had applied for and was promised
a removal - the interests of my young and helpless fami ly demands
from me the strictest vigilance in guarding my professional
character from attacks from any quart er .
Both Philip Russell and Horne denied any intention of reflecting on
Hall's professional ski ll or conduct , stating they had signed the
petition to show their disapproval of an arb itrary act by Clarke .
Russell's reply, which Hall summed up as "candid and explicit", was
a little brutal :