You may remember an account I wrote about the tragic death of the wonderful doctor . . . after cutting himself while performing an autopsy on a girl at the school.
Some strange cases of fatal disease having occurred in the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth, Anstie was called in to make an inspection of the buildings and investigate the causes of the epidemic. In making a post-mortem examination he received a slight wound, from the effects of which he died on 12 September 1874.[1]
Here's how the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography summarises his death:
Some strange cases of fatal disease having occurred in the schools of the Patriotic Fund at Wandsworth, Anstie was called in to make an inspection of the buildings and investigate the causes of the epidemic. In making a post-mortem examination he received a slight wound, from the effects of which he died on 12 Sept. 1874. The sudden death of a man so full of energy and promise by a wound received in the discharge of duty caused an acute and painful sensation throughout his own profession and the public. J.F. Payne, ODNB, 1885
Anstie's death was the result of an accident. He was investigating an epidemic of acute peritonitis in the Patriotic Fund's School in Wandsworth when he received a slight wound to his hand during a post-mortem examination. Six days later, on 12 September 1874, he died of acute pleuropneumonia and septicaemia at his home in Wimpole Street.
His private medical practice had been slow to develop and his early death resulted in financial difficulties for his young family. A committee was set up to organize a memorial fund to assist his widow and provide an education for his son; membership of the committee included the archbishop of York, the duke of Westminster, and the earl of Shaftesbury.
, ODNB,
1874-09-26-DrAnstieIllustratedLondonNews-26sep1874.png" "Dr Ainslie killed by sewer gases — Leicester Daily Post — Wednesday 16 September 1874 Leicester Daily Post — Wednesday 16 September 1874THE LATE DR F.E. ANSTIE, M.D.
The lamented death of this gentleman, who was physician to the Westminster Hospital, seems to have been caused by blood poisoning in a post-mortem examination of the body of a little girl who died in the Royal Patriotic Fund Girls' School at Wandsworth. He had been called in to inspect the sanitary condition of the school.
Dr. Anstie first came before the public an investigator of the uses of alcohol as food. He was the originator and chief conductor of the inquiry into the state of workhouses, which was published some years ago in the Lancet. This inquiry, by the facts it disclosed, was the immediate cause of great improvements in those institutions, as well as of Mr. Hardy's Act for the better treatment of the sick poor in the metropolis. At the College of Physicians he was an acknowledged leader of the party of reform, by which many important improvements in medical education have been effected. He was the instigator of the recent petition of the College to the Premier on the subject of the overcrowded dwellings of the poor, which led to the Act requiring railway companies to provide houses for the populations which they might displace. As practical physician he was widely known by his researches into the nature and causes of neuralgia, on which he published a valuable treatise. He was editor of a journal entitled the Practitioner, in addition to much literary labour of various kinds. The photograph is Messrs. Barraud and Jerrard.
[BNA: Link.]
1874-09-26-DrAnstieIllustratedLondonNews-26sep1874.png"
It is no wonder that Dr. Anstie was killed by the sewer gases at the Wandsworth Patriotic School. I hope there is no second place like it in all England. It seems to have been specially designed for the spreading of typhoid fever. One of the architects not responsible for the sewage arrangementsthus writes of it ." The sewage is carried by earthenware drain pipes from the buildings to large tanks, covered with loose boarding, and situated within about 130 yards of the girls' dormitories sand 80 yards from one of their playgrounds. In these tanks the sewage stagnates until it can be pumped over the land, and then it is distributed round and about Use buildings, as well as over the kitchen garden and meadow adjoining it."
Who can marvel that "the greater part of the illness to which the girls el this school have been subject for some yews pest, is such as would arise from impoverished and rimmed blood." Seeing what the Patriotic Fund was, and who is still the leading manager of it, the permission of a state of things like this for some Paid is beyond mere condemnation. Iwon- C r if other charity schools have Similar arrangements.
[BNA: Link.]
Back to the top of this page . . .