Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet
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Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet, GCVO, CH, CB (15 February 1853 – 7 December 1923) was a British surgeon of the Victorian era, famous for his friendship with Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Treves' reminiscences mistakenly names Joseph Merrick as John Merrick, a mistake widely recirculated by other biographers of Joseph Merrick.
[edit] Life
Treves was the son of an upholsterer in Dorchester, Dorset. He became a surgeon, specializing in abdominal surgery, at the Royal London Hospital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
He married in 1877 to Ann Elizabeth Mason. Around 1886 Treves brought Joseph Carey Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man, to the London Hospital where Merrick lived until his death in April 1890.
In 1902, Treves, having been appointed Serjeant Surgeon to King Edward VII, performed an appendicectomy and drainage of an associated abscess upon the King when his appendix ruptured after a brief period of non-specific symptoms. At the time, this surgery had a high mortality rate. The emergency occurred shortly before King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were to have their coronation in June. The King had opposed surgery for this reason but Treves insisted, stating that if he was not permitted to operate, there would instead be a funeral. When Their Majesties were crowned six weeks later, the name of Sir Frederick Treves was high upon the Coronation Honours List. He was rewarded with a residence in Richmond Park and was subsequently able to take early retirement.
Treves was also the author of many books, including The Elephant Man and other reminiscences (1923), Surgically Applied Anatomy (1883), The Highways and Byways of Dorset (the area of Britain in which he was born), A Students Handbook of Surgical Operations (1892), Uganda for a Holiday, The Land That is Desolate, and The Cradle of the Deep (1908). This last volume is an account of his travels in and among the West Indies interspersed with portions of their histories; describing (among other things) the death of Blackbeard the pirate, an eruption of Mount Pelée (which destroyed the city of St. Pierre, Martinique), and a powerful earthquake at Kingston, Jamaica, at which he landed shortly after the event. From 1902 to 1910 he was Serjeant Surgeon to the Royal Household. He was also a founder of the Red Cross Society, and was the first president of the Society of Dorset Men.
Around 1920 Sir Frederick went to live in Switzerland where he died in 1923 at the age of 70. Ironically, he died from peritonitis, which in the days before antibiotics commonly resulted from a ruptured appendix. His lifelong friend Thomas Hardy helped arrange his funeral in his native Dorset.[1]
In the David Lynch film The Elephant Man, Treves is played by Sir Anthony Hopkins.
[edit] External links
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Charles Ritchie |
Rector of the University of Aberdeen 1905–1908 |
Succeeded by H. H. Asquith |
