Page 39 - Chiron Calling Autumn/Winter 2022

John Rowland Hodgkins DSO FRCVS RAVC
by Graham Hodgkins and Peter Maddox
John Rowland Hodgkins was born on the 29th of September 1881 in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. He was the second of three sons of Alfred and Mary Jane Hodgkins. Both John’s father and his grandfather practiced as veterinary surgeons. Alfred graduated from
the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, while Samuel Hodgkins (John’s grandfather) was recognised as a veterinarian under the Veterinary Surgeons’ Act of 1882. It was, therefore, a family expectation that John would join the family business, Hodgkins and Son.
John was sent to Burton Grammar School to ensure he received a classical education. This was the same school attended by Frederick Hobday, later Sir Frederick Hobday C.M.G., F.R.C.V.S., F.R.S.E. and principal of the Royal Veterinary College. Frederick Hobday and Johns Hodgkins were to cross paths several times throughout their careers. The first of these contacts was when Frederick Hobday was apprenticed to John’s father.
John began his journey to become a veterinary surgeon in 1899
when he sat for the Royal College
of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) entrance examination. Candidates for the Royal College had to be capable of writing from dictation, parsing a simple sentence, reading aloud, and understanding the rules of arithmetic. John passed the entrance to attend the Royal College in 1900.
On graduating from the RCVS on 13th July 1904, John faced a hard choice about his life’s next direction. He ignored his father’s wishes to work in the family business. Instead, he joined the Army Veterinary
Corps (AVC) and was appointed as
a Lieutenant to that branch of the service on 26 August 1905. He spent the early years of his service working at the Army Veterinary Hospital at Aldershot.
The AVC was established in 1903 and was officered by Veterinary Surgeons. Before 1903, Veterinary Surgeons had been recruited directly into Army regiments and cared only for horses within their regiment.
A fully formed veterinary service came into existence after the Boer War (1899-1902), when the Army lost hundreds of thousands of horses, mainly through ill health.
In January 1907, Lieutenant Hodgkins left aboard the HM Transport Dongola for his first posting to India. During this posting, he was to spend much of his time
in what is now Pakistan. The 1909 Harts Army list shows Lieutenant Hodgkins was based at the Hyderbad Sindh Cantonment. In 1911 he was serving at the Quetta Cantonment.
Lieutenant Hodgkins’ first posting to India was almost his last. While working at the Artillery Veterinary Hospital in Poona (modern-day Pune), he nearly drowned rescuing a group of horses.
A group of six horses had been segregated from the rest at the hospital because they were suffering from a highly contagious and chronic skin disease. They had been tethered on the banks of the Mula River and were supposed to be under the care of Indian grooms locally known
as syces. However, the syces had abandoned the horses as soon as the river started to rise due to the heavy rain.
Bombardier Murphy, who’d witnessed the horses in distress,
ran back to seek help when he came across Lieutenant Hodgkins riding his horse. On hearing about the horses in danger, the Lieutenant immediately rode off to the scene where the poor horses were up to their necks in water. Lieutenant Hodgkins swam his horse out into the river to start to rescue them. He managed to get one of the horses to safety and was on his way back to get the next one when his horse tripped
on a sunken branch, and he was thrown into the river and swept away by the fast-flowing water.
Fortunately, he struggled towards
a tree onto which he hung until he was finally rescued from the river. The incident was reported in several British newspapers, including the Englishman’s Overland Mail, on
1 August 1907 under the heading “Drowning horses and Gallant soldiers. A sensational rescue.” The Civil and Military Gazette, on 30 July, published the article “Sensational Aquatics at Poona. Narrow Escape of Men and Horses from Drowning.”
While serving in India, John was promoted to Captain on 28th August 1910, and he also commenced his work to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (FRCVS). A Fellowship from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was usually awarded on the submission and examination of a thesis. Captain Hodgkins’ thesis was on Rinderpest or cattle plague, a virulent disease encountered by his grandfather, Samuel Hodgkins, in 1865.
Captain Hodgkins finished his service in India on 31st January
1912 when he boarded the troopship Rohilla and headed home. His
next posting was to be Dundalk in Ireland, halfway between Dublin and Belfast. There had been a British base at Dundalk since 1791.
In October 1913, Captain Hodgkins was transferred to Dublin, where
he was posted to the Marlborough Military Camp and worked at
No.4 Veterinary Hospital. The Marlborough Base was part of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, headquartered at the Curragh Military Camp under the command of Brigadier Gough.
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