| Description | Second interview with Professor R D Lockhart recorded on 18 March 1985 by Mrs Elizabeth Olson. Miss A. Philip (secretary at the museum) also contributes to the latter part of the interview.
Transcript of Interview :
L … you never know when or what they'll ring, however he explains that I've to go and see Mrs So and So he has just prescribed a line of treatment for her, a pessary for uterine prolapse, but she is a bit neurotic and I must just try to please her. Full of anxious misgiving I duly ring the bell at Mrs So and So's front door to pay my very first professional call, feeling more like an impostor than a physician. An elderly gaunt woman, eyes me suspiciously with a forbidding appearance, one hand on the door post and the other on the handle. 'I have called on behalf of Dr Anderson who has just gone off on holiday.' 'Oh that's a pity'. I agree pleasantly. 'Oh well I suppose you had better come in'. She leads me into a very comfortable kitchen where we take up of the chairs. It transpires that she has some discomfort and does not think much of the treatment. I explain that Dr Anderson insists upon her keeping to his instructions, that she must give it a fair trial and that considering Dr Anderson's wide experience and reputation it is hardly fitting for me to discard his method at once and make another examination. 'Oh no, I wouldn't let you'. Secretly I am relieved. Then she subjects me to a running fire of questions, 'When did I qualify? What were the names of the boys in my class?' before seeing me out at the door with the remark, 'Oh well you've got quite a nice manner and I think you'll get on alright'. However, compliments are not always free from a shadow of doubt and Professor Sir John Marnoch tells a story against himself. A physician had invited him to consult upon an old lady and after the examination while the physician happened to be out of the room she turned confidentially to the Professor and said 'eh man, but you're a terribly skilful doctor, my mother died in your hands, ye ken'. And now we must go down to the sea in ships. Hitherto I have never been to sea except with the Long John Silver and the like and going to sea in traditional style is an incident wherein the sad, romantic and the picturesque are beautifully blended. Crunching down upon the shingle on a summer's morning you splash aboard the ship's boat. Some tanned sailors in blue jerseys and high boots push off into the bay and the cars [oars] in the rowlocks and the [howling?] girls and the farewell handkerchiefs are but the measured prelude to the great adventure when your ship bowls merrily to sea before a sparkling breeze and evening finds you enshrouded by an alluring sunset that features the luxuriance of tropical isles, scarlet flamingos, screeching parrots, chattering monkeys and pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight. However, I did not join Her Majesty's destroyer Pellew in this fashion. Late at night I wedged myself into a carriage at King's Cross, literally the last herring in the barrel, to find in the morning that my travelling companions were little gentlemen of fifteen years or thereby, so-called snotties, most of them about to join the big battleship the Barham. In my opinion the training of a naval cadet is rather uneven and indeed lopsided. A disadvantage of specialisation before generalisation. That remains with him in later years. However, they are perfect little gentlemen, au fait with the world, quite at home in the bustle of a big railway terminus and highly entertaining company. After a long night in the train I was very amused to see one of them improve his pleasant appearance and the general atmosphere of the compartment by producing a large pot of isoma cream which he plastered over his face and then rubbed off with a towel in the absence of facilities for a good wash. Late at night we scrambled out at Thurso and across the Pentland Firth to the Old Man of Hoy and his brother islands that folded the mighty monsters of the grand fleet in the secrecy of Scapa Flow. About one or two in the morning I at last arrived on the Pellew to inspect and in turn be inspected by my new companions. The Captain, a Cavendish, is very quiet and chews his words a little when he does speak. The First Lieutenant is a big man who has just come from Malta where he has become seized with the fever for [?] and he calls this a perishing climate. The Engineer Officer, a little man, is extraordinarily moody. His wife and children are away in Bermuda. The Gunner or the Warrant Officer is an Irish man. The Sub-Lieutenant an English public schoolboy has large blue eyes and the most wonderful pink and white complexion that would put any schoolgirl in the shade. In fact among themselves the sailors call him Phyllis or Gladys as they fancy. My duties as a surgeon probationer, I was not qualified at this time, this story is not exactly chronological, were diverse, I played the gramophone, kept the wine books and censored the mails and gave lectures upon first aid and hygiene.
O Did you do a lot of physiology when you were a student? You studied under Professor McWilliam in those days, have you any stories about him?
L He was a very good lecturer but we didn't have the time to do any great deal of work in his department. Apart from lecturing on physiology he was also, in his department he had a very good man, that was Dr Innes, whose main work was teaching us histology, but he was very good.
O That was in the Physiology Department in those days?
L That was in the Physiology Department, he actually taught us histology. He was a good teacher.
O Did you do biochemistry or was that before the time of that really?
L Biochemistry of course was also done in that same department, but the professor, he was the leader of the department alright, everybody just toed the line as to what he wanted I expect.
O Did that attitude of the professor being in charge and everybody else doing what he wanted change after the First World War when perhaps the lecturers had been away in the war and come back not perhaps so obliging?
L I never questioned for a moment how the professor of physiology ran his department, I was quite a beginner, I was there to learn and I was paying attention. The fact that he had a very good lecturer - the only delight to me was that he was easily followed and he was very good.
O At that time Professor Reid in the Anatomy Department, he would have been the professor, who were his staff?
L Professor Reid at that time and the Anatomy Department we weren't so much … He came to Aberdeen from London. Now he'd made his name before he came from London because he was the first man that was a full time teacher of anatomy, so he was something unusual. When I was watching him as a teacher I saw that he was a much better teacher than the students gave him credit for. I could see at once how good a teacher he was but that was after I had been teaching myself and I could appreciate how skilful he was but the fact remains that he had been the first full time anatomist, everybody at that time, there was nobody did nothing but anatomy. That was a completely new adventure and he was the first one.
O What sort of job went with anatomy, being a surgeon or a general practitioner, or what?
L They would usually tend to be surgeons although Professor Reid had never any intentions of being a surgeon he was as I said the first of the full-time anatomists.
O Did he make you dissect the whole body as students?
L Oh yes. We did our dissections very carefully. There was no two ways about it. He knew exactly what he wanted and we jolly well knew that we had to toe the line otherwise we heard about it.
O Then you joined his staff and helped him keep up the same tradition when you were teaching there?
L Yes. As I've already said I appreciated his ability as a teacher far more at that time than I did in the beginning because already I had been teaching and whenever I watched him I could see how good he was but of course the students that had come back from the war rather fancied themselves and they could get a bit restive and they just thought he was an old fogey but I had had some experience and knew differently so I had no sympathy with the students because I could see at once he was a very good teacher.
O In your teaching career, did you feel it was your responsibility to make the students study or the students responsibility? Was it Reid that had a little black book that apparently he made notes if people weren't doing things?
L Yes. Professor Low had a little book as well.
O Did Professor Lockhart have a little book?
L No, I relied on my memory. There was no mistake about it I appreciated him coming from London as a teacher, I could appreciate his style and his ability, but of course some of the students that had already been at the war thought he was an old fogey.
O When you went to Birmingham, Professor Lockhart ,did you find the anatomy department there was as good as the one you'd left in Aberdeen? I meant in its arrangements really. Did you find that the students did as much work and the course was the same?
L Well I went to Birmingham, I had a very good interview.
O You said that, yes.
L It so happened that the man who interviewed me was the Principal of the University.
O Yes, you told me that.
L He said "tell me Dr Lockhart, what do you think is going to be the position of anatomy relative to all the other subjects in the medical curriculum in the course of say the next ten or twenty years? Of course, if you think it's a stupid question do not hesitate to say so" and I immediately replied "it is not a stupid question sir". He was pleased about that. "In fact" I said "it's a highly intelligent question and if I can be allowed a moment I'll show you how important that statement is". Because I had just travelled to Dublin with a professor of anatomy in London who had made a very important discovery. Working with the new drug Interferon they had discovered a derivative which causes cells of the human body to proliferate, that's to multiply, as rapidly as cancer cells do. Now the moment I said that I realised I had everybody's attention because I was now explaining why it was such an intelligent question and it was obvious to me none of them had seen this article and they were only too interested. You must know that surgeons do anatomy all day long, every day and through time began to think was there really any need for anybody else to think about teaching anatomy at all. After all they did nothing but anatomy. They had to know it because they were going to do it every day and you could see the difficulty, they couldn't be bothered with any ordinary individual, they'd got to have something special about them before they'd pay attention to anybody teaching them anatomy. Simply couldn't be heard of. But whenever I said I'll give you an example they were all attention and I said they'd discovered a derivative from the drug Interferon and this derivative caused cells of the body to proliferate very rapidly, as rapidly as cancer cells do. Now that was a highly important discovery and they were all eager, all these so-called surgeons, they wanted to hear, this was something they knew nothing about and of course I put my foot down quite firmly, I was telling them something they knew nothing about.
O So were you the first full-time anatomy teacher in Birmingham? Had they had surgeon anatomists before?
L No, they had … I never paid much attention to who they had in anatomy before. But I would have set it up my way.
O Yes, I can imagine.
L I never at any time had any difficulty in teaching my subject, anatomy, to anybody and it didn't matter to me whether they were sailors on a crowded battleship or whether they were students that rather fancied themselves because they'd been at the war for a little while. As long as I could have the men I could guarantee I could keep their attention because if they didn't pay attention and I caught them out I was quite unmerciful. There was no doubt about that I had every confidence in my own ability as a teacher and I took no end of care. It's difficult to remember everything but you arrive on board a ship and there's a captain of the ship, he's a three ringer but then the engineer officer is a two and a half rings with a blue one in between the rings. Now he was a family man and he had been told off to stand beside the cruiser, our battleship the Pellew while she was being built in Glasgow and his wife was there and a boy and a girl, his family. It was quite interesting. He always was very worried, the nearer we got. We did convoys from Lerwick to Bergen. A convoy was made up with several ships and they always met with the leader of the convoy which would be a full-sized surgeon, two of them in fact, and we took up the positions on each side of the convoy that a submarine had to be in to make a successful attack on the convoy. You must understand that travelling from Scapa Flow right away to the Norwegian coast, the Norwegian coast is heavily crenated and we were not at war with Norway. It so happened that we had done this convoy several times so I knew what it meant and I always wondered why Mr Haight [?] was the name of this engineer officer, why he was always so worried, and he came and explained to me you must realise that the nearer we get to the Norwegian coast the further we are becoming from Scapa Flow, the only protection we've got, and the further we are away from it the longer it's going to take to get any protection. The crenated outline of Norway is ideal and what the Germans did, quite sensibly, they sent two light cruisers up during the night way north and in the morning they came down on the destroyers from the north and they were light cruisers. Well a light cruiser of course was a very powerful ship compared with a little guard fleet destroyer. Not only was it a very powerful thing in comparison but it had speed as well. The only thing we had against it was a little 30-knotter. Now it's called a 30-knotter, it couldn't do 30 knots but it was an old ship and it had a flat bottom but it had no depth in the water so it couldn't be a target for a submarine. The submarine travels at a much deeper place, so you'd had all got to be carefully educated before your convoy started off. I of course had been busy and I had been teaching my men. I had actually indeed promised my mother that I would carry on with classes that I had never had but I knew of the books that were required and I took these books with me and I studied them very hard, I'd made a promise and I'd made it to my mother, so that came before everything. I told my surgeon commander that if he got any complaints from some of these girls, there were plenty of young girls you see on ships and they all thought of course that a medical student was just the very thing for a party and every girl expected that they would bring their own medical student down to the party and of the course the very fact that I simply would have nothing to do with it, I was a black spot at once. But that didn't worry me, I'd already warned my commander who was a three ringer and a very good man who had written a book to guide surgeon probationers and I knew his blessed book by heart. I could have recited a whole lot of it. I went to see an old lady and I realised that she had an acute abdomen and I said you'll have to come into hospital at once, you've got what's known as an acute abdomen and it must be operated upon, and she just looked at me and said "no". Now I said "you know I'm just a youngster but I'll have to go but I'll be back and I'll bring the most senior surgeon in the place with me, Mr Mitchell". I knew I could bring him because we were on duty, and I said "I'll be with him and we'll have you into hospital at once because that's your only chance for you to survive". I came back in due course with Mr Mitchell and we had her into the hospital at once and the moment he opened the abdomen he immediately said "this is more like a post-mortem than an operation", so that wasn't so very encouraging but I'm glad to tell you straight away she recovered and I was very delighted about it.
O Did you work as a student in the dispensary at Castle Street?
L Yes, we used to go to that dispensary. It was a pretty slip shod affair and it wouldn't have mattered a great deal if you hadn't turned up. It wasn't very well conducted.
O Was it like a casualty department or was it just outpatients for poor people?
L Just as you said it was outpatients and they turned up there and you never knew who they were or where they come from, they didn't belong any particular, you did your best for them.
O Had they no money the people who came to the dispensary? Is that why they would have gone there rather than to their own doctor?
L That's quite a difficult question. We didn't look upon them as patients that had an interested doctor anyway, we just realised they were poor souls that had come there thinking at least they could get something for nothing, it wasn't going to cost them much.
O When you came back to Aberdeen from Birmingham, they were all set to open the new Foresterhill hospitals, weren't they, or had they just done that, it had been 1935, just before you came back? Would you see that as a great improvement in the service in Aberdeen?
L It never entered my head to criticise the situation in Aberdeen because in the first place Professor Low was a professor, and I had every faith in Professor Low. Far more so than anybody else I had ever met. Professor Low was an ideal man, an absolute toff. Even the English people knew that. For example the head of the Pellew was an Englishman, and he was a Cavendish, one of the noblest names in English families, and he was a good chap and he knew that I was very seasick. I had a bunk which was at the far end of the wardroom and there were drawers under it but they didn't lock and they held my bed clothes but anybody could come in and everybody on the ship that had the right to come into the wardroom never thought twice of banging in if they wanted to and the result was if I had a patient to examine I had no security because they just flung open the only door there was into a lavatory and it was very unsatisfactory to examine a patient properly when you could be interrupted in an instant like that. It wasn't good enough but I did my best and I knew that once I had the men I could hold them, I never had the least doubt about that and it was proved to me by the success I had with the men. Then I would draw them pictures. We managed to get a blackboard and I had beautiful coloured chalks, not only that …
O You'd been doing your Living Anatomy pictures on the blackboard for them?
L Yes, I had everything off, I had full confidence in myself as a teacher. If I once got the men I could keep their interest, and of course I was quite serious with them and if I found that they hadn't been paying attention I roasted them there and then so they knew not to take any liberties. I certainly laid down the law. So you see when I came back to Aberdeen I was only succeeding Professor Low and I'd never have criticised anything Professor Low had thought in any way.
O Did you find that you had to change the department? Did it get bigger, more staff or …?
L No, I didn't have to do anything at all. Low was a very competent man, he was not only thoroughly competent he was very honest, very, very honest and never exerted any persuasion due to his office, never did that in any degree whatsoever.
O Who was professor of physiology when you came back? Was it Cruickshank?
L No, it was … he was quite a famous man, he was a good man, yes he was a good chap, he was quite a good teacher too. What was his name?
O Professor Kermack must have come to do biochemistry about the same time as you came, would that be right?
L Did you say Professor Kermack? No, not Kermack.
O The blind man.
L According to the university regulations I pointed out to the students that this was in the university regulations, if the were absent 25% of the times they were not allowed to get a sign-up for having attended the class. If they were absent 25%, I said now that's the university regulations. I said the moment I see a row of nothings opposite a name I'll ring up your parents before I take the final step but I said when I have to do that you're absolutely on the verge. You can be refused a sign-up because you've been absent almost 25% of the time and that was a university regulation. It had been known that a man, he was quite a good chap from away in South Africa, he was through all the medical course for all the different years and he'd never been passed one examination yet, and he attended all the classes and he'd done quite well but then he had never attended the final examination. That was the reason for bringing out a new regulation that you were not allowed to sit the classes of the second professional till you'd passed the first and not allowed to pass the third until you were through the second, whereas before that some of them had even gone the whole length, they'd passed all their exams but they'd never passed the actual final exam. It was a very stupid arrangement in a university. They just didn't know what they were doing.
O Miss Philip has a nice story that you had to come into Marischal College to set a spotter very late, do you remember about that? There had been gates at Marischal College she said.
L If you were going to set a spotter it took time. Before you had to find out where the specimens were that would show particular things. It's one thing knowing what you want to do and another thing finding the materials that show the point. Well that's a great difficulty in a big department. Now I'll just give you an example, it might not interest you but nevertheless it's very important. Professor Low had the best system anywhere, far and away the best, there was nothing to compare with Professor Low's methods, nothing anywhere and the essential point was we had a very big basement in the Anatomy Department in Aberdeen and we had nothing in that basement but baths and all the taps had been removed, all the glittering taps, but the drainage away was blocked and cemented over so that they couldn't possibly leak but they were complete baths and that was the finest system that existed anywhere. It was a great big basement and it was full of bath tubs.
O With specimens in them?
L Yes, but they were all floating in their own special fluid. Now there's that famous picture, you know the picture of Low and … I was quite able to climb over the gate and get out if I wanted to.
O An awful job to be in so long.
L It was a bit annoying when you'd been working away till all hours and mind besides I'd got to get home and we were in this house here.
O And would your car have been stuck inside the gates at that time or were you more likely to walk in those days?
L I certainly had a car at that time which was one advantage but of course I could open the gate and take the car out.
O You had a lovely Daimler hadn't you?
L Yes, it was a very good car.
O You had it for a long time?
L Yes, and the virtue was it was completely flat in the bottom whereas the Jaguar that I had subsequently had a big mountain right round and if you get out at one side you've got to get in at the other side rather than step over this big hillock in the middle.
O I remember that on your last lecture they covered your car with rhododendrons, didn't they?
L That was simply because they had some left over after.
O After they'd thrown them at you inside the lecture?
L Well, when I went into the class it was very amusing. I went into the class and there were the girls sitting with rhododendrons in their hair and of course the first two or three seats were full of girls and then there were boys behind them and of course these boys being behind two rows of girls thought they were at liberty to behave as they thought fit. That was one thing that I had to put a stop to. There was an interesting point arose. Dr Alexander Lyall was a very personal friend of mine and he was a great pillar of the church in Aberdeen. Now his own son was in this class and he was one of a rowdy group of three rows of boys that sat behind the two rows of girls and he was a very good friend to me as well and I enjoyed our friendship …
L … and he came and asked if I could do my best to arrest some ideas in his young son. He was beginning to think that he would rather take up the Jewish faith if you please and I had every liking for the boy because I realised in the son virtues that had made his father the man he was but then of course the father was utterly aghast at the very idea of his son wanting to become a Jewish disciple. But I said I would do the best I could. Well it was a very easy thing to do. All I did was, we had a central area, you had the two rows of girls then you had these three rows of boys that had been … central area, now I had big tables there and they were covered with deep red, beautiful heavy cloth and the floor was a very beautiful linoleum.
O Yes, deep red too.
L In the very centre there was the epidieiscope and underneath that you'd quite a big area underneath all the seats, you went right through and underneath, you'd quite a big area. And all I had to do, I just brought these boys down into the centre and whereas before they'd had two rows of girls to protect them here there were now as I walked about among them, sometimes I was behind them, and this took them clean by surprise because it took the wind out of their sails completely. They never knew whether I might be three inches away or I might be the whole width of the lecture theatre arena.
O You had a bad habit of knowing their names as well I remember, which was very disconcerting for the baddies?
L I did the names very quickly, that was a thing that they used to criticise. Now I said you all know your own name and just see if you can beat me, you know where you name is and if you can't answer on the dot like that I'll give you a telling off, so that was how I did it. I just got up to go on that row as quickly as I possibly could and anybody that held me up I went for, so that they knew.
O You were Dean of the Faculty later on. Did you enjoy that?
L Of course there were other members of the Faculty and it was very amusing to me at times to hear some of the people talking.
O Really?
L Yes, very. I'll give you an example. One man apropos of nothing, he didn't say, "it takes a hell of a long time" but that was his implication to go through the prizes awarded in anatomy. He said, "was this really necessary?" And I was quite astonished. I said the description of how these anatomy prizes are to be given is laid down in the directions governing the gift and I said it wasn't for me to question. They were actually stipulated what was to be done, it wasn't for me to reason why, I said, but to do or die. That was the condition and the Dean more or less told him, had no right to allow that question to be asked, because he knew as well as I did that the conditions were laid down in the university handbook, that they'd got to be done in this particular way. Now it so happened we had one boy that had done exceptionally well and he was a Jew and his parents were so delighted they gave him a motorbicycle. His youngest brother was only starting and he took the boy out on the pillion, behind him and as it so happened they were both killed instantly at a crossroads. I went to this burial and I had never been to a Jewish burial and I was very struck by the whole procedure. We met at the gates, when you go at Bucksburn, if you cross the river at Bucksburn you'll come to what we call Quarry Farm is the first. Now that was the house where Low was born but at that time they had introduced about another two feet of, new stones gathered in fields, but they'd raised the height in the very centre of the house …
O You went to a Jewish burial you were saying?
L And anyhow we started off there. They had little trestles and the coffin was put on the little trestles and you had a little service, then you walked a few paces on the way to the burial ground itself, then the trestles were set up and you had another little service, so that you actually felt as a mourner at this Jewish grave, that you were seeing the dead on their way. You felt you were taking part in it and when you came to the actual burial the same thing happened. The burial itself had certain features that I appreciated very deeply and one of them was that you were helped to bury them. I had on my top hat and all the rest of it but I could handle a spade along with any gravedigger. It was quite obvious to me there was a gravedigger in attendance thinking there was going to be some fun because of people that had never handled a spade in their lives before. But the moment I caught his eye I froze any ideas that he might have that there was going to be any amusement, I could have handled a spade alongside any gravedigger, just one look was enough. I took off my top hat and got hold of a spade and I put in the first, I covered up the head of the departed, I did that myself and I treated my own mother in the same way. I followed the Jews practice and I thought it was very kindly done and that was why I followed it out in my own mother's case. There are rules - I can't tell you that but it was a thing I never found out. The fact remains that a bowler hat's not supposed to be worn by anybody until they're through their second professional and however they knew that, seemingly instinctively, the students themselves seemed to know and I never could find out how they knew.
O What happened if somebody tried it?
L Well you could never recognise the hat again. It just was absolutely ruined. That was the funny bit about it, they just took an ill will at the blessed hat but how they ever knew that the person had not … you weren't allowed to wear a bowler hat until you were through your second professional. Now I never knew how that arose and I never found out how they knew that a certain individual had no right to be wearing it.
O Was it the rest of the students that knew?
L Well I don't know how the students could have found out but they just instinctively knew that somebody was wearing a bowler hat that wasn't through their second and they just minced it up.
O Did the medical students wear togas? They didn't in the fifties. They arts students wore them but the medical students didn't really.
L Wear what?
O The red gown.
L We were so much doing in white that we wore white coats in the dissecting room. We had enough to do with our own white coats. Even then they got dirty. Then my mother didn't like having to handle them but nevertheless I was always turned out well. That was one of the fascinating things, how they ever found out that a second bloke had no right to be wearing a bowler hat and they immediately set to and you couldn't recognise it again. It was very odd but they just instinctively knew. I began to get interested in badminton and I of course was a pure beginner but I knew enough straight away that deceit was one of the most paying things in the game. I used to go down all by myself to this blessed empty hall and I practised looking in one direction, I could put the thing very carefully just over the net and then I cultivated the ability while I doing that to put it in the opposite place. While I was insisting to them that I was going to go away there I did it quite near at hand and it puzzled them no end and it was very easily done because in both instances it was quite close to the net and it had to be hit up. I was working with John Grant who had a good smash behind me and he smashed it down and we won the first eight points against old Crombie. Crombie was also working with somebody who was a beginner possibly, but the fact remains that we won the first eight points and left them standing and he was very annoyed about it and he did a stupid thing. Suppose that were three teeth, he was working with this tooth and he put a gouge in like that so that he used this tooth as a fulcrum and he split the edge right off a good sound tooth and I immediately warned him I said that's not good enough and I got up and left his room. I said I couldn't afford to allow him any more, he had no right to break the whole edge off a sound tooth so I just left him and he didn't send me a bill for that.
O Just as well I should think.
L Yes. He and his son both fancied themselves as badminton players. But anyway we fairly flattened the old boy out, John Grant and myself. We won the first eight points straight away which was quite good going.
P … traveller and he was a medical graduate from Aberdeen a long time ago, I can't remember at the moment, but he travelled extensively and he left about £8,000 which was a tremendous amount of money away back for the things to be brought together, but there was one condition that nothing of his money or his books or anything had to go to King's.
O Really, he didn't approve of the other university.
P He didn't approve of King's or he'd been hardly dealt with maybe by some of the professor there, I wouldn't know, but that amount of money was invested and throughout all the years that Professor Lockhart was there the interest from that amount of money enabled Professor Lockhart to go down to Sotheby's and buy Chinese exhibits.
O And he chose Chinese ones because that was what Professor Lockhart liked or was there a reason for choosing Chinese ones.
P We didn't have a Chinese section and it was Professor Lockhart that started in 1952 to build up the Chinese collection.
O There was Professor Lockhart's own collection of things like hats, wasn't there? You had a collection of your own of different headgear and hats in the Anthropological Museum?
P But they all belonged to the museum.
O And you used to lecture about them, didn't you?
L Yes. A large collection of Greek, Roman, Oriental, modern Continental and British coins for which the University's greatly indebted to numerous donors. The collection is kept in the Wilson Room off the museum.
P That's why the room was named the Wilson Room.
O After this person?
P Yes.
O Curiously enough we found some coins in Kuwait and we had casts of them and my husband sent them home perhaps to you to have them compared with the ones that were in the museum in Aberdeen and it turned out they were the same.
P Mr Raven, who was in the Greek Department, he was the keeper of coins. Any enquiry we referred to Mr Raven and he came in. But this Robert Wilson, MD, University and King's College 1815, it was 1815 he must have graduated, and he was the private secretary to the Marquis of Hastings, Governor of Malta and he travelled very widely.
L Things have been bequeathed by him to Marischal College.
P … it was considered a vast sum of money in that time.
O And you used to buy Greek vases and things, didn't you Professor Lockhart?
L The Henderson Collection of early classical vases bequeathed by [to] the University in 1863 by William Henderson of Caskieben, MA Marischal College and University of Aberdeen 1809, MD Edinburgh 1813, lecturer in Materia Medicum, Marischal College and University of Aberdeen 1818/1860.
O Yes, after the fusion.
P All the collection has been built up by medical graduates or graduates travelling. Then Professor Reid did his best to broadcast that fact and I think it was in 1929 that this Sir James MacGregor gave us a very, very valuable collection of material.
O Which was?
P He was Governor General in Papua New Guinea and various other places, Fiji, he moved around tremendously and whatever he got he sent to Aberdeen, but there's a duplicate in the British Museum. He was very fair. Stone axes and lots of things, clubs from New Guinea.
O But Professor Lockhart would have seen to the arrangement and display of these things? In his time they would have been laid out better and more able for people to see them?
P We were restricted for money in a way. The space was limited and I think things were in the store room quite a lot.
L There was a leader of the British Forces in Afghanistan and they were digging for protection and they came across some very ancient things. That's Professor Reid's brother and he sent them home to his brother and we have the letter warning Professor Reid. He said there's no regulation at the moment about my taking these things and sending them to you but you might as well keep your mouth shut as not.
O Just in case anybody felt it wasn't the right thing, yes?
L That they ought not to have been disturbed. Anyway they say they got these things from Reid's brother and they're marked in the museum as presented by Professor, what was the name of his brother, Reid's brother and then underneath that it says the brother of Professor Reid, to show the connection. Presented by the man who was in charge of our forces, they were digging for protection against the … I have a picture that awakens my memory at once, it's a very fine picture with one of these hill men with a good moustache and a beard, very smart.
O Do you remember somebody called Ralph Piddington, I was told to ask you if you remembered him? Did he send stuff for the museum? Did he spend long in Aberdeen?
L As far as I remember, I don't think that I was so very keen about him, Piddington. He actually went away out to Australia, and whether he got lost, I think he was at Alice Springs at one time, but he really had settled in the furthest east province, what do you call it, the most eastern part of Australia.
O Queensland?
L Yes, Queensland, but …
O Further east than that. And did he stay there for his life or did he do some discoveries there?
L I didn't care for him much.
O So you wouldn't have followed his career.
L That didn't alter the fact that he did good enough work. He anticipated the value of the things and he was responsible for having them carefully displayed. Indeed the other interesting point was, the thing we had to be very careful with was the specimens. They were very important. They were original things. We got any amount of them.
O It would have been difficult to store everything?
L Yes. We could make room in a way.
O Were they stored in the Anatomy Department as well as in the museum? Did you use part of your department's storage space or had you more rooms in Mitchell?
P No, there was a big store up in the Museum itself but then when Kingussie Museum came into action you had a lot of work making things for the Kingussie Museum.
L Actually the beautiful sign at Am Fasque was done by the staff of the Anatomy Department, beautifully done, and I have all that mentioned there somewhere.
P Then you had a lot of work with the St Ninian's Isle Treasure found by the later Professor O'Dell, Geography.
O I was sorry that you didn't get that for the Museum. Would you have liked that for the Anthropological Museum or was it too important to be kept in Aberdeen?
L We already had it, there was no differentiation between anything, even although it was Piddington or anybody else that had collected certain things, it all went to the same place.
O I was thinking of the St Ninian's Treasure though, remember it went to Edinburgh?
P Remember it was found up in St Ninian's Isle, the silver St Ninian's treasure, and it was in such a bad state that it had to go to the main museum, the British Museum to be washed and taken care of and all the rest of it. Then there was a court case about it and the Principal was involved and he wrote on behalf of Aberdeen putting Aberdeen's case, but Aberdeen lost.
O That would have been Thomas Taylor?
P Yes, and all we got were replicas. Seemingly there were three sets of replicas made, one that went up to Shetland or wherever it was, and two to be kept in the vaults of the administration section at Marischal College. One set to be used to give to visitors …
O To look at, yes.
P And another set was supposed to be kept intact. But when Professor Lockhart later went to ask for the set that was supposed to be kept intact for showing in the Museum at Aberdeen they had a devil of a job finding it and when they did find it, someone had started to give out various pieces. So that all that Aberdeen could put on show when the Professor went to ask was no more than eight or ten objects.
O That was disappointing.
P … 1952 for how much?
L I got a bargain of it anyway.
O I believe that. Was it a special goose?
L Yes.
O What was it? China, or ?
P It was in stone wasn't it? And it had the cantilever actions that when you lifted it up it was in the form of a wine vessel and it kept the wine beautifully cool and when you tipped it up the wine poured out at the beak.
O That must be lovely, I must go and look at that.
P It was a beautiful thing.
L But I have it there.
P No, not this but you bought the jade buffalo. Remember the beautiful jade buffalo you bought at Sotheby's?
O Did you enjoy shopping at Sotheby's Professor Lockhart? Was that fun?
L Yes, it could be very interesting, very, very interesting. I always remember I was sitting say here and there's a gentleman sitting beside me and there was a thing came up and I was anxious to buy it, it was a teapot, but there was also a jug. Although it was the teapot I wanted, the jug came up first and I thought I might as well bid for it in case I didn't get the teapot. So I got the jug, knocked down quite quickly to me, and in fact they just said Aberdeen and they knew that was me. The next thing was when the teapot itself came I thought I was going to get it quite easily because I was the only body that had bid and I saw the auctioneer, now this is an interesting point. There was a gentleman sitting beside me and I was here and the auctioneer, I had already got the jug and now I was bidding for the one I really wanted was the teapot, and I'd given him it and I saw the auctioneer look at the other side of the room and all I saw him do was that …
O Raised his eyebrows?
L It was obviously asking a man for a bid and he got it and then he came back to me and I just froze him with a look. I wasn't going to be toyed like that, so I didn't get it. And the gentleman who was sitting beside me passed me to get out and as he passed me he said 'well played'. He'd seen the funny look and I would have liked fine to have had a talk with this man that walked out because all he said was 'well played'. It was stupid of him. You see you're far safer if the auctioneer's a young man. If he's an old man he's got everything at his fingers, he knows perfectly well that he can look at somebody and maybe just do that and he's asking for a bid. I saw it, I saw the upward thing, and he looked at the other side of the room and of course this man beside me had spotted it too.
O And you bought Greek vases too sometimes? A thing called an amphora I seem to remember a story about.
L I'd had no real knowledge of many of these things but if I liked the look of a thing that was enough. I had the money and I knew if I … I had done very well for the University and at this time the professor was Sir William Hamilton-Fyfe, it was no longer Bobby Reid's brother, it was Sir William Hamilton-Fyfe that was the professor …
O Principal, yes.
L And I always remember that I had to follow him along the dais in order to descend, but as I was closing I was very interested, standing on the dais immediately under my feet, there was a reporter and I was busy doing what I think was one of my best bits of writing and I had said …
O You were coming off the dais?
L Yes, I said it was quite a point that I was making.
O Would that have been open lectures?
L Really awaken my memory so much. You see I've pictures of the people …
End of Interview
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