| Description | Interview with Dr Daniel Gordon recorded on the 21 May 1986 by Elizabeth Olson
Transcript of Interview :
DG …There was any of number of small farms like that with the best bits of the hillside farming and the bogged bit at the foot of the hill is beets and the top of the hill broon whins which we use for firewood.
I Ah yes, were you the only child?
DG No, I was the fourth child, I had an older brother who was born in 1890 and I had a sister born in 1892 and one in 1894 and I was born on the 16th day of January 1901, so that when you speak to me about How old you are? I say I am the year as the calendar says and in my eighty-sixth year now for instance and I had a very happy boyhood their in Tealach and went to school in Kennethmont, is this the sort you are wanting?
I Yes, we do this briefly to give the background.
DG I went to Huntly school ....
I For your secondary part?
DG For my secondary part.
I How long did that last?
DG That lasted 4 years, 4 years from 1914 to 18 then I tried the Bursary Comp. in 1917, and I was 50th in the Bursary Camp and I had another go in 1918 when I thought I should have done better, I didn't do well in French and that put me right back and several chaps in our class, who had started dynamics that year were getting bigger marks, you got 200 marks far each of 5 subjects, and mine were maths and the 4 languages: Latin, Greek, French and English and the French was the thing that let me down very badly because I had dropped the 200 marks, I had very few more than 501, otherwise I would have done better. I thought I would do better the next year 1918 but I didn't do terribly well that, and I only got up to 24th.
I Well, that was still a creditable performance.
DG Oh, it was good enough.
I Would there have been a lot of candidates?
DG Oh yes. The Bursary Comp. was the great thing at that time. The boys coming in from the farms, the small farms that we lived on were very poor. We had a good diet, your diet was good, we had oatmeal and potatoes and you had eggs and cream and milk and all these things were an excellent basis and then far meat you had a small bit of beef an a Saturday night, you went out to the Kirkhill, to the butcher and bought a bit of brisket which cost half a crown, about five pounds of Brisket and that lasted us hot an Sunday and cold the rest of the week, by the end of the week it was made into stovies and always an Saturday our dinner was a milk dinner, that was tapioca or rice or something like that and there was rabbits to catch on the hills and there was chickens and lots of things, so although we were poor, we had quite a good diet but then there wasn't much money to send you to the 'varsity and you were better to have a bursary. Now my place was 4th in the class, I had £17 the highest bursary, there was four of them for £30 and there was several, if I had gone up a few places I would only have got £20, I only lost £3 and that was the 5 subjects, 200 marks in each. Now my grand-uncle who lived in Rhynie, old Reverend Compton Smith, he tried the bursary in the 1850s and he said that he should have been 4th bursar but he was down to 11th because he put in the Latin version a dative instead of an ablative. The latin version gave 800 marks and there was only 200 marks far the whole of the rest of the exam...
I Really, so it was different balance?
DG It was a different balance.
I And was £17 enough to help you through your year?
DG Well £17, we had to work noturally on the farm. I worked on the farm always in holiday time. When I went home at Christmas, my brother would say "Now we are needing turnips, for the cattle, you will pull these 20 drills of turnips" and I would take a look at the long drills of turnips and I would pull them and put 4 drills into one row, with their heads off, so by the end of the pulling, I would have 5 rows of turnips that the carts would go up between and I threw them into the cart and then at Easter there was the harrowing, going behind the horses when we were sowing things, mostly oats, there was no wheat or barley much in those days .... '
I And would you earn a wage for doing that? Or was it just to help the family?
DG Oh no wages, ix was helping to pay for my 'varsity.
I When did you decide to go to University?
DG I don't know, it was my uncle Benjamin Skinner, whose photograph is over in the corner there, who was a rather famous dominie who, in 1924, was president of the E.I.S (the Educational Institute of Scotland) and all the teachers at that time, said it was Skinner that was able to get their pay up, he was the one that got their pay up the first time, after the war, so he was very well-known there and he made my plans for the 'varsity. He says "we'll put you through in 6 years to taking your MA and your MB ChB as well.
I Yes, did you want to be a doctor, or was that his idea?
DG I don't know if I was wanting to be a doctor or not, I can't tell you very much, whether I was intending, thinking I would go in for practice or not, it just went on...
I It seemed to suit you all right?
DG It suited me fine, I was always a cheery sort of chap, we had a very lovely time from 1912 to 1914 in the boy scouts, that was great, that was at Leith Hall, where the Laird, Charles Edward Norman Leith Hay of Leith Hall, the Laird was Scout Commissionaire for the county and I must have been a bit of a favourite with him, because I got away in the Daimler to start scouts in Fraserburgh and we went down to Huntly and into Aberdeen and so on. I always seemed to get with him and we had a very happy time, and I think that was a bit that had a tremendous influence of my life.
I It had broadened you I suppose, from being just on a farm?
DG Well it helped me a good deal, yes I am sure it did, I'm sure it did, but even when I came to the 'varsity in 1918 I was a pretty rough diamond, I hadn't seen very much.
I No, were you the first in your family, in your own family, to go?
DG No, no, not in my own family, my sister had been training as a teacher, she was born in the 90s and she was training as a teacher and her sister two years younger, knew she would have to came home and be lead of all works and on the farm, so my mother decided that they would send her to Huntly school where her alder sister was just finishing, to get a year in domestic science they called it, cookery and baking and knitting and that, my mother had awful neuritis that year and she gave me the milk pails and says ... "Now you go down and milk two cows. We only had two cows and I would go down at 5 o clock in the morning and came back very proud with my two pails of milk, so at the farm work both inside and out, I got a lot to do. Mother made me pare the tatties, and do the dishes, and ..
I Just everything.
DG And there was two things you'd to do with your feet was, you'd to tramp the blankets in the springtime, that is what spring cleaning was, you got into a great tub of hot, lovely, soapy water and you tramped the blankets to get the dirt out, and the other thing you did when there was a great load of oatmeal came home in the autumn for the winter oatmeal, it had to be very hard packed in, into what they call the meal girnel.
I Ah yes, to make it keep.
DG Make it keep, so you had to wash your feet that day, and you had to go into the big girnel and tramp the meal.
I When you were a boy at school, did the beginning of the war bother you?
DG No, no, the war came in 1914, just the time we started school at Huntly. I'd got extra Latin from the Dominie, and French from the Infant Mistress, and I was able to go to Huntly school and go into the 3rd year at Huntly School and I got on very well, very well with D.M.J. James, he thought that I was clever, he was all wrong you know but he thought... so he gave me extra tuition and he made me stay in in the evening and get extra and I always remember him saying, after a Latin version I handed to him, he says... "Oh Daniel, don't you feel that this is wrong, this translation?" And he almost tore his hair out!
I Getting his priorities different from ours. When you went up to the University, and to the Arts Faculty, would there have been a lot of students in your year?
DG Not so many. Our year was the great medical year when I went there in 1919. You see, this was October 1918 and we'd all turned up for the Bursary Comp. My uncle said, 'Look for a hunchback chappie whose, be kind to him" pupil from Strichen where he was dominie and I got to know this chap and he had a smaller bursary than me but I got to know him and we got wir bursaries and that was a bit money. And I stayed in digs...
I Where about?
DG Up in Westmount Street, that was far the first year and after that I stayed in Richmond Terrace.
I And did you have a room, or a share of a room?
DG A share of a room, I stayed with my cousin, Gordon Skinner, who was a, I think it was an MA and B.Com, he took a scholar's degree and afterwards out in ?Batavia and he and I stayed together and we got in a box week about from the farm with oatcakes and bannocks and eggs and all the things, and our washing, and we got that in, he'd get one week and I got the other. So we had a lot of good food it was taken in produce.
I And did you prepare it far yourselves or did your landlady do that?
DG Oh no, we'd a landlady, the landlady did that, the landlady looked after it all and as I described in that article about our year, we had, the digs had tenement houses and there was just two toilets at the foot of the garden far the six tenants.
I Far the whole block. And would one landlady just have had two students or would she have had as many as she could cram in?
DG Same of them would, I think two students was very common up in Rosemount in those days. Rosemount was the very common place and ....
I And did you walk to the University?
DG From first year you walked across to King's along by Elmbank Terrace and down to King's. You took twenty minutes, it took exactly twenty minutes and you got there for your first class at nine in the morning and you, in the first year, I had Arts with Professor Adolphus Jack.
I Yes, that would have been English.
DG Do you want me to tell .....
I Yes please, what do you remember about him?
DG Well. Professor Adolphus Jack was a man with red hair and striking looking appearance and gestures and so on and he would declaim poetry. Oh he was a delight when he declaimed poetry, he was an absolute delight. He was so good at it. And he had Flora Campbell was a bonnie girl in the front seat whom all us chaps were very keen on, you see. She was the best looking girl in the class and she afterwards became Flora Garry, the poet, who has done so much for the Buchan tongue for the lyric poetry of the north east.
I Indeed.
DG And we'd Rowentree Harvey, he was the year after us, he became editor of the Press & Journal and there was a man called Lewis Coutts who came from Ellon who was known as the Buchan poet and he quarreled with Jack and Jack gave him, was very worried about him, he didn't give him his honours and Coutts sued Professor Jack and gave Jack a very miserable time but he was a great scholar, Adolphus Jack he was and he was the Professor of English. And I'd English at that time and the other classes I had was Latin and Logic. Latin was Professor Soutar and Professor Soutar came from Kennethmont as well, at least his grandfather was a souter at Seggieden of Kennethmont, that was the parish where I was born, and he was married to a Skinner and my mother was a Skinner, so I was related to this Professor Soutar a sort of second cousin that is, but he was, he never took, he didn't want any relationship until the last day when I was leaving and managed to get a good place in Latin. I didn't have very good places at the 'varsity, except I was third and he'd asked me would I came back for honours and I said no, I was going on to medicine and that was the last I saw of Professor Soutar. He was a dry as dust scholar, very scholarly chap Soutar and his father was a draper, George Soutar, in George Street and he took his salary as loan as he got it and when he wanted to get his hair cut he'd to ask for a penny halfpenny from his father to get his hair cut.
I When he was a young man, oh indeed.
DG That was the hard kind of times that he'd been brought up in. And his own finances were dreadful, he'd a very extravagant wife, and he went a kind of bankrupt, he was under trustees and his salary paid to his father, paid to his trustees, he never seemed to see his salary, but a very nice gentleman. He retired down to one of the Oxford/Cambridge universities, I can't remember which and did a lot of research down there. And our third professor at that time was Professor Davidson. He was known as 'Bourtie' because he'd been minister of the parish of Bourtie after he, when he joined the 'varsity he followed Professor Bain, a very famous professor of logic and we learned all this logic, all this and all that kind of stuff, and he was a kind sort of chap. He was a bachelor who stayed with his only sister and he hadn't much humour in him, not like his father Dr Sam Davidson of Wartle who was a great doctor in the Garioch here, great humour, but Davidson hadn't much humour but he was very kind and we were invited, about six of us at a time, down for an evening, you see. We'd music, and we had coffee, but we started off with, you either got sherry or sherry and lemonade, that was the choice, you got either the one or the other and that was, he was very kind, and that was our three professors.
I Was it unusual far them to take you home, like that?
DG That was unusual. He was the only one that did it. I don't know if the honours classes in the other years would have, they might have got more, then in 1919, the Latin class finished in April 1919.
I Ah yes, you just did two terms?
DG Two terms, and the English and Logic went on to June so in the summer term my uncle had put in Zoology. Now this was to get my MA, get the four first-year professional examinations in Medicine as four degree examinations in Arts, you see. So we got Zoology, and the professor there was J. Arthur Thompson. Oh, he was a delight. He was possibly one of the best the most popular lecturers in the University. He was at Zoology and he, at his first lecture, the whole of the students wanted a class, went into the Zoology class because he was so delightful in his first year. It was a commom thing that all we did for the first class of the time. And he had a story always about the liver fluke. He always gave that as the first lecture you see and they were all ready far the time when he said the bit about the history of the liver fluke, its human liver and everything, and the sheep you see and the sheep grazing away and the sheep passing the fluke again an the grass and he had the words, "and the sheep went on its way", you see, and then he waited, he paused, then the whole class shouted out "Rejoice!" It was a great thing that, he was a great professor, no doubt about it. Then we had Finlay in Chemistry. I'm starting the next year now.
I And this was a completely new subject for you?
DG Absolutely new, I'd no Chemistry at all.
I And was that the usual situation?
DG And there was a tremendous class by this time, all of our medical year was in it you see and whether three hundred started in our year I don't know but the two classes, there were about two hundred in each year.
I Amazing.
DG Tremendous classes they were and we were the afternoon class and we sometimes got a very brilliant lecturer called Dr Gray. He was really good. A Very nice man, Gray, brilliant, but he just couldn't keep order at all.
I With all those students he needed it.
DG He was rather before his time, he lectured on the atom, no one had heard of that about that time, this curse of this century, he lectured us and he didn't call it atom, with his Aberdeen accent he'd call it the "autum" like the season and of course the students were wild men, they were home from the war and weren't caring a damn about anything. They were just not worrying themselves and they just became very obstreperous and the order was dreadful. So one very sunny, unbearably hot afternoon they were getting a bit high and he put his finger at me and at Jim Innes, another student, and he says, "If the behaviour of the class does not behave" - I don't know how he picked us, whether we were misbehaving the worst, maybe we were, he says - "I'm going to ask these two gentlemen to leave." And the class behaviour became worse, the girls were alright down the front always, they behaved beautifully, and we were asked to leave. So we left. We were followed by eighty percent of the men in the class. They all came out, great fun outside we were having, horseplay and everything, it was long before the class came out you see. And there was only about twenty chaps left in the class and there were twenty girls, and they came out you see the girls were just moved, they weren't touched but when the men came they were pushed back and fore between the two groups of students, really just a piece of sheer horseplay. Then we had Charlie Niven, Charlie Niven was ... am I giving you too long now?
I No, it's fine.
DG Charlie Niven was Natural Philosophy. He was a senior, a brilliant man. We had some great experiments, some tremendous experiments and he would, you know the thing where you throw pellets at a big thing to make it go, gradually after a few pellets, it's a great heavy thing is the swing, that sort of thing, and he was almost blind and he had a very sympathetic heart and one of the students went and asked him for a sign-up. You had to get a sign-up in your class before you could sit your degree, as you know very well. And he'd faun percent and Charlie gave him the sign-up you see, he'd a sob story an awful sob story, so his pal... he was the same type, he was a lad he got only two percent you see, so he would try, so he went along to see if he could get a sign-up far the class and its said, he said, "Two percent, you've only half the number of marks of your friend!" Then I'd a pretty nasty experience in the class. He was blind you see and he couldn't see anything that was happening very well in the class and the students behind passed me down in amongst the girls one day. So I was just sitting here and Charles was looking across trying to look through his glasses at me. Now is about time you were asking me a question or two?
I Well, but if you speak that's fine.
DG I'll tell you my last one. My last professor, I've given you...
I You've done Zoology, Chemistry,
DG Chemistry
I We've got Botany and Political Economy to go.
DG Botany to give you. Now Botany, how do you know about Political Economy?
I Ah, I've got a piece of paper with all sorts of nice things about you on it.
DG Well, well, Botany. I missed the famous professor, Professor Trail, just by a year.
I Did you?
DG It was great fun going out with Professor Trail and professor of Zoology. You could go out to the beaches...
I Oh, they took you out did they?
DG Oh yes, they took you out on a Saturday morning. And a thing called Vas something, a great long tube, a metal tube that you put your samples into. And round the estuary of the Ythan was a lovely place to go to.
I How did you get there?
DG We went by train to, out by the coast to Cove, and Nigg, we'd go by the trams and then you took, when you were going north, you took the tram if you were going out by Murcar and then I think we went by bus if we were going...
I To the Ythan?
DG There was a bus, a sort of a steam drawn bus at that time, went right out to Newburgh. I was only once at Newburgh. So, I missed him, but he was as dry as a stick old boy, Trail, but the man that we had was Craib, who was a very much brighter chap altogether. I think he maybe was inclined to have good times, I don't know, at any rate he fell out of a train and took off his leg..
I Yes, I read about that.
DG Yes, took off his leg. I don't know what happened there.
I Was that before, after you'd had him?
DG No, this was after I'd had him, but my experience was with him you see. I stupidly let my imagination run when I was describing to him the fly trap plant and I put in at the end, "at this stage if the fly is a wise fly, it hops it" you see. I'd gone home knowing I'd never have an oral in Botany, I knew there was a star oral for Botany and the only other ones that got orals was the doubtful ones. I knew I was through my Botany. There was no bother about that, because I was trying to get 60 per cent. If I could get 60 percent in the class I was perfectly happy
I Kept you options open?
DG I was fairly sure about my degree and this one I went home. And a telegram came to me, right at Kennethmont when I was working on the farm to say that I was required to do an oral. One of my pals said that I was up for an oral.
I Oh dear.
DG I goes into the place thinking what on earth is this going to be? Professor's standing here, Coates Armour sitting beside him, and they took a look at me and I'd to came along a row of desks like this, just the four of them, and when I'd come up to them, he said "Thank you Mr Gordon that's all we want" They'd just wanted to see who it was, so this stupid thing that I'd put in ....
I Cost you a train fare?
DG Cost me my train fare, that's quite right. Well now, the Political Economy was the eighth subject I'd to get for my MA because you couldn't get an MA with four science subjects and three arts, so the year I was trying my second professional, we were taking Anatomy the second and third year at the 'varsity, we're taking anaomy and I had this Political Economy at four o'clock in the afternoon when everybody else was there. You saw the Law students coming in at that time and I enjoyed Political Economy very much. It was a man called Forrester, it was before the times of Sir Alexander Gray, he was a famous professor of the thing, just after me. He was the great Scottish poet, Sir Alexander Gray, who wrote, writes that thing, "This is my country, the land that got me, these open spaces are surely my own" One of the best lyrics that we have. And he used to take the bus out to, or the train, out to Newtonhill, come off there and walk across by Lairhillock Inn where he got his high tea and then go down onto Deeside and come back with the bus there. And I said, "Why was this poem written at Lairhillock, where did you do that?" when I met him at my son's wedding. He was at my son's wedding down in Edinburgh, just a whiley before he died. So I asked him at the wedding and he explained that that was what he did. That he did that very often on a Saturday but that was after my time, that was Sir Alexander Gray. Now we're getting to Anatomy.
I Yes, could we .... were you a student at the time of the Armistice?
DG Yes, I'd only been a month at the 'varsity when the Armistice came and, oh, it was a great spree all up and down Castle up by Union Street and the Gordon's Band came along, and I can't remember the Pipe Major, I think it was Kenny it was his name and he'd a VC. I remember the VC he had and he played up and down Union Street. We had a very happy time.
I Were you expected to be called up?
DG Yes, I was expected to be called up in January, you see.
I Ah yes, when you reached your eighteenth birthday.
DG Yes, when I was, and Sidney Davidson the surgeon who was in our year was waiting as well.
I And would you have gone or would you have been able to postpone it far your studies?
DG By that time, it would have been postponed I think, but six months earlier it would not have been postponed. It would have been the time you see when they were still calling them up. You see, for a time, in 1917 they were calling up the lads at seventeen, not waiting till the eighteen, before the Americans came in, there was more manpower you see, that was the thing.
I It must have been very frightening - to have the prospect of going to war at 17/18?
DG Well, I lost two cousins in 1915, within a week of one another. One was an arts student and his brother was working at home on the farm and they were boh in the Gordon Highlanders. The arts student was in the U company of the 4th Gordons and he was killed at the age of nineteen and his brother had joined the army, joined the territorials at the age of sixteen in 1914 summer and he was called up right up and he was killed a week later, at the age of seventeen and that was two of the Gordons that had gone. Oh no, no, no, I would never have been frightened of being called up.
I Would you not?
DG Oh, no, I wouldn't say so.
I Would you thought it was an adventure.?
DG Oh, well, it's the same sort of thing. I was in the army, in the RAMC, in the Second War. I was in that. We'd an OTC at the end of the First War too, quite a lot of fun at that time. Linklater, who was in our year, who became the great author, he was a sergeant and David Levack, who was the radiologist, he was a sergeant and we'd a very happy time then down in Fleetwood and then in the Isle of Man, when we were in the OTC, a whiley after the war.
I Yes, was that a new idea then, the OTC?
DG No...
I Or had there always been one?
DG It was U Company of the 4th Gordons before that. It was the OTC...
I And what did U stand for?
DG U Company, University Company I would think. I think it would have been University Company.
I Ah yes, and did the young people at that time think that fighting in the First World War was the right thing to be doing? You know when you read the poets afterwards, they look back and the terrible waste that there was. But did it seem like a waste at the time? In, say 1927-18?
DG At that time, that article that I wrote for our year I said, survivors of the muddiest and the bloodiest war in history, it was, and still it was the muddiest, a dreadful, dreadful time. Oh the trench warfare, oh there were, young chaps of eighteen you wouldn't worry about going away at all, you wouldn't think about it...
I No, I suppose.
DG Of course, they fed you up well the first six months of the army when you were training. You got all the bully beef and everything you could eat.
I Yes, get you into good condition.
DG Just to make you into good condition. It was a, we were very healthy. My friend, Bill Cheyne, was called up, he was in my class and he was called up. He was six months older than me. He was called up in June you see and when he was discharged in February to start medicine, he got an army grant.
I Ah yes, and that would be a big help.
DG We'd no army grant, oh, tremendous help, tremendous help. If I'd an army grant I wouldn't have had to depend on my father for a penny.
I I see.
DG I could have done it with my bursary. I got a bursary later on, of thirty pounds for the last three years of the medical thing. It was a local bursary that we got at Huntly. Somebody had left money in Huntly and me coming from the Huntly school and that...
I You got it. Did you get your fees paid as well as the bursary?
DG Yes, I got my fees paid by Carnegie, that was paid by Carnegie grant, and I paid altogether a little over a hundred pounds, so middle 1930s when I had a few pennies started, I managed to pay it back.
I Did you, yes, I remember that.
DG You paid...
I They hoped you would pay it back.
DG Yes, they hoped you would pay it back, but there was very few of them did pay it back.
I Really?
DG It wasn't very often done but it was just, I just felt well, haying had a struggle to get through...
I It would maybe help somebody else?
DG ... I'd better just let it, I didn't pay back my bursaries.
I No that was different, but the Carnegie was on that understanding?
DG That was different, yes.
I Did you enjoy being in Aberdeen compared to living in Kennethmont or were you homesick?
DG Oh, no, no, no.
I You were having a good time?
DG We'd a very good time.
I What did you do socially in the evenings?
DG Well, socially in the evenings was work, more or less. You had, your work was Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night. You worked four nights in..
I Solid.
DG Friday night, you went to the societies.
I And what did you belong to?
DG I belonged to the Anotomical Society, then the Medical Society, and Christian Union we were in. Tom Taylor who became...
I Principal.
DG Principal, was president of the Christian Union. He came from Keith and the Christian Union rooms were up in an attic way up above 41½ Union Street and one time we couldn't get in so Tom Taylor and I went out on the roof and climbed in through a skylight so I've been in good company.
I Yes, haven't you.
DG And, then we had the Debater. I liked the Debater. It was the time, the only time that I spoke at the Debater was once I think at, it was the time that Asquith was trying for Paisley you see, and the great expression was at that time, he'd been knocked out, Asquith, he hadn't been able to get back, and Asquith the thing was, it was some expression, I shouted out, "Keep your eye an Paisley", and that raised a laugh. It was really a stupid thing, just a memory you see. We'd good debates, good debates...
I And where was that that?
DG That was held above the Union, in the debating hall.
I Where was the Union then?
DG The Union was above the drain...
I In Marischal College itself?
DG Above the medical departments, in Marischal College, just above the drain and the billiard room and everything in there.
I Did the women go there as well? Because Flora Garry couldn't remember anything about a women's union or women being able to go?
DG I never heard of a women's union.
I No, it was just far the men?
DG Have you been ....?
I Yes I have.
DG Oh how is she?
I Very well.
DG She's very well.?
I Very well, very alert.
DG She didn't remember me in the class?
I She did, she put me on to you. She said, "Of course there's Danny Gordon" which was silly, I was stupid that I hadn't remembered, because I knew you were here but as I say I didn't think of it.
DG Which was one of the ones .... oh, she's a very charming soul.
I Very well indeed.
DG I get some lovely letters from her, but I haven't written her for about a year. There's been nothing to do. She put her poems into the Living Doric her last publication, you see. We got in, of course, Geoffrey Wheeler put her poems into the 'Ten Scottish Poets' which has sold so well.
I Yes, it's done well.
DG The ten North-east poets, sold so well. When's Ian going to publish a book of poems?
I Oh, he doesn't, I don't know, we'll see.
DG What...... ?
I We're still taping, so we better keep back with this one. So, it was just the men that had the facilities of a Union?
DG Yes, only the men.
I And what about the societies, could the women go to the societies?
DG Oh yes, women went to all the societies. There was an Agricultural Society. We sometimes went, you see, we'd a farming background.
I When you say we, who do you mean?
DG Oh well, Bill ?Cheyne and me, this chap who was called up in June 1915.
I Oh yes and that was your friend.
DG He was the dominie's son at Kennethmont and he was a pal of mine.
I Did you go dancing?
DG No, I wasn't much of a dancer, but the 'varsity hops an a Saturday night were very common and the other one that was common was the TC hops. The 'varsity hops were once a month...
I And where were they held?
DG They were held in Mitchell Hall, held up in the Mitchell Hall. And Flo Garry would have told you about them. Did she?
I She said she used to go to the Palace, or something, somewhere off Union, you know, not in the University, but somewhere in Union Street.
DG Yes, the Palais, they used to called it. The Palais, I think it was called.
I I hadn't thought of that, yes.
DG And then there was the TC hops.
I Oh yes and were they...?
DG Students went to them quite a lot, the male students.
I Yes I suppose all the women would have been at the TC, or a lot of them.
DG Yes that's right. That was right. Well that was the social life. Will I tell you about games?
I Yes please.
DG Well, now. We had digs without a bathroom you see. So the first year, the first year, we joined the swimming club to learn to swim.
I And was there a swimming pool at King's then?
DG No, it was the swimming pools that were at the beach. And then we also joined the harriers, that was a running, running thing. We'd run about seven miles and out by Bridge of Don. The next year, we joined the hockey club, the rugger club had same great, hefty good players in it and we had neither speed nor weight, neither the one nor the other, and we could have got in the second rugger club, rugger team fine, there were very few things, but there was five hockey teams going at that time, there was five, and we had George McKay who was the international and he was captain of the first team and then we had J. Arthur Thompson's son, who was captain of the second team. And I was in the second team but they wanted to form three other teams and we formed them with chaps out of our year as captains, very nice chaps, I got the B team and Thompson the C Team and Chisolm had the D team. So we could get on very well then with the shower at King's College and you had it on a Wednesday afternoon when there was, and then you had it in the Saturday afternoon, the matches, so you had two showers a week and that kept you clean.
I And healthy, I should imagine. Were you on the committee far any of the societies you were in?
DG I don't think I was much of a committee type. There was a tennis club in Rosemount in Westburn Park on very rough grass. I was secretary of it. That was the first thing I was secretary of. Just spent my life being a secretary. I was secretary for thirty years of the Medical Societies, I mean not Medical Societies, the Medical...
I Chirurgical?
DG Not the Medical Students, Chirurgical, of the committees, the Panel Committee the local medical committee and the BMA. Over a period of thirty years I was secretary. So I had a lot of work with that.
I Yes, did you write for Alma Mater?
DG No, I never wrote for Alma Mater, no, I never did that.
I Did you write at that time?
DG I didn't write any, no, no. What took me on to writing you see, dear, was that away back about the 1930s when I was at Ellon for a start, the rurals started asking me out to speak to them and asked us to start a Burns Supper for them one night up at Udny and I went up as chairman of that and we, that was the thing started the Burns Suppers for the rurals which have taken place every since then, the last fifty-odd years, it'll be sixty years now. We've had Burns Suppers every one of them in their programmes started at Udny and it started with us taking it up from our Burns Supper in Ellon and that was the time that I started speaking and it landed me in being a guest speaker for, oh, more than forty years. I haven't done much this last ten years but I'm still asked occasionally and if it's any place like down to Ellon or down to Ellon Probus Club. A fortnight ago I was down to dinner that they had at Ellon and there was two places at Ellon I spoke and of course down at, I've kind of stopped now, but I'm managed the last time I was speaking at the Medical Chirurgical was a retirement. It might be oh five or six years ago. I don't know if they're anything in the minutes about my speech then, but Geoff Gill and James Gill came in with me and Geoff said, "How did you know to stop after an hour" and I stopped exactly at the hour, he didn't know you see it's no use me speaking from notes. I can't speak from notes. I can speak just thinking of the different headings. I think of the thing like this. One, two, three, four, five headings and then I think of each heading, a, b, c, and so on, or two, or maybe just one but I can speak like that. I've a story to tell the people at the start that cheers them up, a story to finish them off with and altogether I've done a lot of speaking, because I would have to diffuse quite a lot, that was it.
I So would you say you were kept very busy when you went into the pre-clinical anatomy and physiology year?
DG Oh yes, oh yes.
I Who taught you anatomy?
DG Anatomy was Bobby Reid. He was an old man, his brother was the superintendent of the mental hospital up at Kingseat, not Kingseat at..
I At Cornhill.
DG And he, they could retire at that time, or they couldn't retire at that time and many of these men went insane themselves.
I Oh, dear.
DG They made a rule later on in mental hospitals that a superintendent of a mental hospital could retire at fifty-fire.
I Yes, it's meant to be a great strain.
DG Which was a tremendous thing, yes. So that was then we'd, Bobby had a nasty habit of talking off his book and looking, and asking a question. He'd taken the role you see, Bobby took his role every time, and here was this great class of a couple of hundred of us you see and quite a lot of them never turned up, but their name was always shouted you see by a pal, so he found out a few of them that way and he was very angry. You see he would ask this question but of course the pal should have answered ...
I But he hadn't thought of it I suppose?
DG He hadn't thought of that, that was the stupid thing. And then there was, the assistant was Daddy Low, and he was tremendously keen on twins; he was Embryology, and Lockhart was the lecturer. Lockhart later became the professor. Bobby Reid was the professor, then Daddy Low and then Lockhart and Daddy Low measured everybody. All medical students were measured and I don't know somebody does that still or not.
I Yes, they do, my son was measured.
DG The get the whole thing, and the records are there. But twins was the great thing and we'd two brilliant twins the years before us from, Downies, from Rosehearty in Fraserburgh. Brilliant twins, both got first class honours, highest honours and they had exactly the same number of marks in their professional exams, when the added them up, both exactly the same number of marks because Sir Ashley Mackintosh, at the time of their graduation, he wasn't Sir Ashley then, he said they'd exactly the same number of marks and Sandy Lyle, who became the Biochemistry lecturer afterwards, he got first class honours in that year too. That was the year before us, but these twins were brilliant. The most peculiar thing about these twins who were exactly the same, both very nice chaps, one of them was a lecturer in Bacteriology down at Manchester and became a FRS, he'd same wonderful discoveries, Alan Downie. Richard Downie went down to Sheffield and he stayed there all his life as a GP and they were both first class honours. So that was Daddy Low.
I Did Lockhart get to lecture to you or was he just in the department?
DG He got to lecture to us, yes.
I Was he good at that time?
DG Yes, always good.
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