On the 28th December 1892 Doctor Owen Daly passed away at home; 26 Albion Street, the heart of what was, stretching from the Royal Infirmary to the Hull Medical School on Kingston Square, the Medical Quarter of Kingston-upon-Hull. Dr Owen Daly, more than any other, personifies the vision and ethos of the HMS.
Born (06.03.1821) in Mornington Hall, County Meath, Ireland he was the second son of Owen Daly, JP (1780-1847) who had married a Miss Clark. He took his BA (1843) and MD (1857) to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland and of Physicians in London moving to Hull in the 1840s to become the elected physician to the Hull Royal Infirmary, 1857 and the consulting physician in 1886.
Among the appointments held by Doctor Daly were those of physician to the Sculcoates dispensary and consulting physician to the Grimsby District Hospital. He was lecturer on the principles of materia medica and therapeutics at the whole in East Riding School of Medicine and on April the 5th 1870 he was appointed justice of the peace.
1847 was a busy year for Dr Owen Daly. In June he married the daughter of Thomas Oldham of Louth in Lincolnshire and this was the year when he banded together with 33 other Doctors in Hull to form the Hull Medical Society; a response to a request from Central Government to form these Societies across Britain. We cover the Report on the Sanitary State of the Town (1847) elsewhere.
Dr Owen Daly was one of several prominent Irishmen who held prominent positions in Hull throughout the 19th century. Where the Irish across Britain were a growing presence and resented for undercutting wages in the job market; Hull’s Irish settled. This was largely to do with strong leadership: the Sisters of Mercy and their strong role in education, Andrew McManus, Head of Police; Edward Francis Collins, Editor of the Hull Advertiser and Dr Daly.
Hull was largely a Nonconformist City; Anglicans had a lower profile. And yet, it was Collins and Daly who led the focus on Public Health across the City. It started with Cholera as both men arrived. Collins was clear: “Cholera is a physical evil to be combatted by physical remedies. To combat it, or rather to prevent its approach . . . we must clear out such places as Stewart's Yard, Broad Entry, and Narrow Entry, where the people are weekly poisoned with foul smells and nauseous impurities as patent to the senses of all men as Hull itself'. Daly echoed the thoughts and, the Report on the Health of Hull (1847) was published by the Hull Advertiser itself.
Dr Daly was active within the Profession; contributing a focus on phthisis and other pulmonary conditions. In 1859 he published his findings on the use of a tincture of larch in arresting and restraining pulmonary hemorrhage. It possesses powerful astringent properties combined with the styptic and slightly stimulating qualities of a terebinthinate – a rare combination that appears to present all the requisites for a perfect styptic and is a mild tonic with an agreeable balsamic “pnic” flavour.
His role in the founding of the HMS is his major contribution and with this the work on Cholera in Hull in the 1840s. This aspect of his career will be covered in other posts. That aside, he was the Father of two sons – one of whom followed in his Father’s footsteps at the Hull Royal Infirmary. An entry in the Lancet for 1917 sees Dr Edward O. Daly as Consulting Surgeon at a time when the hospital had 244 beds.
