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Aust. N.Z. J . Surg. (1995) 65, 749-760

SURGICAL HISTORY

FREDERIC WOOD JONES: CORAL AND ATOLLS

B. E. CHRISTOPHERS

A TELEGRAM In November 1904, Wood Jones completed his combined medical and science course at The London Hospital Medical College when he received the degree of Bachelor of Surgery. In the latter half of 1904 he was an unpaid demonstrator in anatomy at this College under his mentor Arthur Keith (later Sir Arthur Keith). It seemed that after graduation he was des- tined in the short term at least to remain in this position. This was not to be. At the beginning of 1905 Arthur Keith chanced to call on the Warden of the College, Munro Scott. Scott had just received a telegram from the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company asking for a medical officer willing to serve at their cable station on Cocos-Keeling Islands. Keith, a staunch admirer of Charles Darwin and his proselytising disciple Thomas Huxley, thought that voyaging in tropical seas (Darwin on HMS Beagle, and Huxley as assistant surgeon on HMS Rat- tlesnake) had been of benefit to these two scientists. It was Keith’s opinion that the young Wood Jones might benefit in a similar manner. Accordingly, he advised that Wood Jones be offered the post, which Wood Jones readily accepted when he received the invitation. His first posting, however, was not to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, but to the office of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company in Singapore.

ARRIVAL IN SINGAPORE The exact date of his arrival in Singapore is not known, but what is known is that he was settled there by 22 February 1905. On that day he visited a dealer in wild beasts in Singapore. This visit is recalled in an article entitled ‘A visit to a wild beast show’, which was published in The London Hospital Gazette in 1905.’ His concern for the welfare of animals is revealed in the last paragraph of this article:

The animals are here seen to great advantage. for they are all in perfect condition, and fresh from their jungle homes; and yet the sad side of animal dealing is more vivid here than even in a cramped zoo, for of this collection of fine beasts. fresh from their forest haunts, and the active lives which each one is so beautifully adapted to live, what tithe will reach alive their miserable destinations? So much has this impressed my friend that he now refuses to send home animals, although formerly he exported numbers, and he told me that he had on one occasion sent off eight orangs in one consignment, seven of which died miserably on the voyage, and the other died soon after landing. The orangs are splendid animals, and to export them and condemn them to a miserable death is a wicked and cruel thing.

Correspondence: Dr B. E. Christophers, 377 Church Street, Richmond, Vic. 3 I2 1, Australia.

Accepted for publication 7 October 1994.

That he did his homework and was well prepared for his stay on Cocos-Keeling atoll is verifiable. This is documented in his earliest letter written to Mrs [Cecilia] Keith.* This letter was written on the letterhead of the Eastern Extension Australasia and China Telegraph Company Limited and dated 28 May 1905. It was written while he was still in Singapore about 1 week before he left for Cocos-Keeling. In this letter he indi- cated that he had already done some reading on the corals, the crabs and the rats of Cocos-Keeling and he wrote that:

I have got together an outfit for microscopical work and for playing with the corals and worms and things.

His sojourn in Singapore lasted about 4 months. It was however the Cocos-Keeling atoll outpost of the Eastern Exten- sion Telegraph Company that Wood Jones had his sights upon.

SINGAPORE TO COCOS-KEELING In his autobiographical material Wood Jones writes that:

... very early one morning [in Singaporel in June [ 19051 word went around that the Maggot was in harbour.’

This meant that his spell in Singapore was about to end. Maggot was the nickname of the cable ship Magnet and it had arrived for the purpose of transporting some staff of the company to its cable station on Cocos-Keeling atoll. It must have been at the very beginning of June that the Magnet arrived in Singapore because Wood Jones reached the atoll later that same month. The trip from Singapore to the atoll via Batavia was a long one. Of the Magnet and his trip, Wood Jones wrote:’

She was ugly as only a nasty little converted tramp steamer could be. It was said that she had been built for the Spanish iron ore trade and it was even reported that, loaded well down with a heavy cargo of iron ore. she had behaved in a way more or less normal to ugly little tramp ships. Possibly this was true, but with all her cable gear on deck and no cargo, save cable and island stores in her holds, her ways were freakish beyond belief. It has always been a marvel to me that she never turned over completely in the great southern rollers between Java Head and the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Short of turning over, she did everything con- ceivable in the way of irresponsible liveliness. Even had she been a tolerably well-behaved ship in a seaway, she would still have been a very beastly thing to live in, since every detail of her structure made for added discomfort. I got my gear sent aboard her with a sinking heart. I looked at her tiny cabins and her other internal horrors and decided I would take up my quarters on the bridge, where at least there was fresh air, despite the perpetual rain of smuts from her funnel. I had a long chair taken to the bridge and told Symonds I was staying there for the whole trip. I had made up a bottle of the old London Hospital ‘haustus bromo-chloral co’. and took a large dose of this sedative mixture before we left the harbour for the open sea. I took it again at intervals during

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the wallow of a thousand miles and more to the islands. The journey to Batavia was a tolerable one and the short rest ashore there was very welcome; but once the Sunda Straits had been passed and Java Head had been cleared. the Maggot threw off all restraints and. to me, the rest of the voyage was a nightmare.

Arrival at Cocos

Anyone who. after suffering a long bout of almost intolerable pain, has had an injection of morphia, knows the feeling of utter peace that steals in upon the cessation of the almost unbearable discomfort. Just such a feeling came to me in the early dawn when at length the Maggot rode into the calm lagoon of the Cocos-Keeling atoll. It is not only the finding of a safe haven after days and nights spent wallowing hopelessly in an unending wilderness of Southern Ocean rollers that makes the first sight of an atoll lagoon so astonishingly beautiful. There is the intrinsic beauty of the place itself that makes the experience an unforgettable one. I doubt that if there is anything in nature in which colour dwells more beautifully at all times than in water: and the colours of the waters of the lagoon of an open Ocean atoll are beautiful beyond all description. It is useless to speak of blues and greens: it is necessary to glide into the lagoon and look down on the water from the bridge of a ship and watch the change from indigo to lesser, but more vivid, blues and to green and bottle glass as the ship slowly comes to anchor. The crash of the rollers on the barrier reef is left behind and a new world is entered-a world of complete peace and of an almost unreal beauty. All the hopeless discomforts of the journey are forgotten. Here is a new world and soon the little white- sailed boats and the snow-white terns are coming out to welcome us.

It is not to be wondered at that the early navigators looked upon these curious fairy rings of land that they met with, all unexpected, in the midst of vast wastes of ocean. as something mysterious, for in truth it is a much more surprising encounter to come upon an atoll in the midst of ocean than to approach an oasis in a wide expanse of desert. Even the rather tiresome talk of divine providence, working through the agency of the so-called coral 'insects' may be excused in those Victorian books that told of these things to the young. An atoll is a surprising thing and no atoll in the world is so surprising as Cocos-Keeling and this by reason of its perfection and its utter isolation.

Cocos-Keeling atoll lies 12" 9 south of the equator and 96' 53' east of Greenwich. It is situated in eastern Indian Ocean, some 600 miles from Java; some 2000 from Cape Leeuwin, Australia, and about the same distance from Ceylon. Even its nearest island neighbour - Christ- mas Island-is over 500 miles away. It is not easy to draw a picture of this curious place; but essentially it consists of a fairy ring, slightly deformed into an oval, so that it is about 10 miles in its longest axis and 7 miles across its shortest. The elongation is in the line of the South East Trade winds. The fairy ring measures some 25 miles in its circum- ference and of these 25 miles some 17 are dry land, broken up into 24 islands spaced at intervals around the edge of the ring [Fig. I].

THE GOVERNOR'S DAUGHTER When Wood Jones arrived at Cocos, the Governor of this tiny kingdom, George Clunies-Ross (Ross Tertius) was in Europe and the administration of the atoll was in the hands of Andrew, his youngest brother, and Sydney, his eldest son. It was, however, upon Gertrude, one of the Governor's daughters as representing the family that he was taken to call by the Superintendent of the Cable Station on his arrival in the islands. Some 45 years later in his autobiographical notes Wood Jones wrote:

It was Gertrude who five years later [ 19101 met me at the Royal Chapel of the Savoy in order that we might be married.'

Nothing of the magic of this romance or the intensity of his love for Gertrude is captured in his autobiographical notes. For- tunately, some letters that he wrote in 1908 to his future father- in-law, George Clunies-Ross, have been preserved and these tell the agony of his passion. In order to understand these letters it is best stated now that at the time of their first meeting Ger- trude was married to Axel Wilhelm Blom and was the mother of four children. By 1908, when these letters were written, Ger- trude had left Cocos, had left her husband and was living with her children (five by then) in London.

LETTERS FROM NUBIA These letters were written from Nubia where Wood Jones was working on an archaeological survey with Professor Grafton Elliot Smith (later Sir Grafton Elliot Smith). It was in the second of these letters that Wood Jones could contain himself no longer. It was the news from Gertrude telling of the illness of her eldest child Ulla which triggered his outburst. It was an emotional explosion written with confessional candour. Maybe the heat, the isolation, the dust and the flies of Nubia contrib- uted to this outburst. This letter to George was written from the Survey Department, Shellal, Aswan, Upper Egypt:4

14 February 1908 You have told me that if ever I needed help I might call you-you may think that I am cringing to you. It is my regret that what I want to say must be in a letter-for I would [rather) tell you what I mean to your face.

I have today heard about little Ulla. and I do not think it is well for her: for when last I examined her in Cocos there was nothing that would have caused anyone in the world to suspect tuberculosis [this turned out not to be the case] -it must be making rapid strides.

It is this-this blow that has fallen upon Mrs Blom that has made me do what may appear an indecency - an absolutely shameless thing -you must pardon me-you must forgive this letter of mine-I cannot help it.

Gertrude is the bravest woman in the world-and to be quite frank 1 have for nearly three years been in love with her. I have of course kept quiet in this-to her my love could only be a threat-it could do her no good-now it seems that the indecency of this love-the wrong of it all might lose some of its shame could I help her-and I can.

She does not love her husband-and her husband can be no help to her-she would be free-and he would have her free. I too-God help me- would have her free that I might take her-look after her-work for her-and help all that I could. You must not think that this is any sudden resolve. and madness of a moment. It is the result of nearly three years of wishing and quietly thinking.

Gertrude cares for me-more than that I think that she trusts me; and were I to be able to say to all the world 'she is my wife'-we could be happy-I believe very happy.

I have hid nothing from you-for I would tell you all this and run the risk-at the worst you can but think me a cad that you have har- boured in your family. Axel would set Gertrude free- I would to God that it might be so. that I could ask her. that she might be mine-and I would give my life to making her happy.

There is something so absolutely indecent in this that I am doing- writing to you-that you might help me in all this-that I think that you will be ashamed that ever you knew me.

But I make an appeal to you - I can think of no other way of making a dishonest man honest: and so I tell you her father, that I love her, and that if there is any hope-any tiny hope of her freedom-it is the

CORAL AND ATOLLS

Fig. 1. ‘Fairy ring’ of islets comprising the Cocos (Keeling) atoll based upon the 1973 AUSLlG Map of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

75 1

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greatest thing that ever could come to me. It may strike you that this letter is hard, calculating and rather brutal-its expression may be so

-but its motive is not. No-one wants Gertrude as I want her. No-one loves and admires her as 1 have always done-no-one wants-like I want- that she should be the mother of my child.

I have chosen to tell you all this-after much thought-for were I at home I would come to you and tell you. You may by chance curse me.

As my appeal I will say that if in this letter there is only insolence, only indecency and ingratitude, respect it as a sincere piece of insolence-if there is in i t any tiny thing with which you can sympathise - if you can help us for God’s sake help us.

F. Wood Jones

The reply and his response The above letter was sent to London where George Clunies- Ross was staying at the time. He received delivery of the letter 8 days after it was written and his reaction was such that he replied the next day:

... At present I can’t see any solution to be possible. The only thing I can hope that you will be strong and will act as a man and a gentleman should. Leave lit] to time that cures all things. You have my sympathy. I wish we could talk this over face to face. At present I am very much in the dark in this matter.%

‘Leave [it] to time that cures all things. You have my sympathy’ is what Wood Jones wanted to hear. Composed probably the morning after he received the reply, Wood Jones’ response, written in the same staccato style as his first letter, indicates that his besottedness had not diminished?

I have waited to write to you until I had your reply to my letter. Since the day when I posted it I have had most unpleasant thoughts for i t seemed to me that I must certainly have lost the respect of the one man whose respect I would do everything to have. I have dreaded that you would call me a cad. and that you would say that you cursed the day when I came into your family and your life-and I should have deserved it all.

And yet I would not have undone it all. I would not have had the

When last I wrote to you I got up early in the morning and wrote before breakfast that I might do it all at the most unromantic time of the day - today I am doing the same.

Firstly let me thank you. that you have been patient with me, and second let me say at once that I would not for one tiny moment have my love bring harm or disgrace as its consequence ... It was because it seemed to me that I could help rather than hinder her-that I could make things lighter and easier and not more difficult for her, that I dared to tell my inner thoughts.

I have tried in a feeble way to tell you as a man, what it would seem to all the world that only a knave could tell you-that 1 loved her and that I wanted her.

I have talked with you and to some extent I know your views, and I am not afraid to tell you things that I would tell to no-one else. I know the impossibility of it all. I know the wrong of it all-and yet I feel sure that time will untangle it.You will not laugh at me in this, for I believe it truly. I loved her from the first. I will wait and wait-and I will be a man and I hope to God a gentleman-tho’ the difference never seemed great to me.

I believe truly Sir that when-not in the case of a boyish fancy- but when the call is 50 great as it is here, then there is some power that will put things straight in the end.

letter back even [ifl I could have recalled it.

Do not be afraid that I shall be foolish or bring disgrace in all this. I can wait and wait-but all the time I shall wait for what so strongly so wonderfully calls me. If you can still have any sympathy with me I will tell you more-there is to me a very real and very curious thing in the attraction of people-instinctive attraction I mean. I have never met anyone who seemed so utterly to be my picture of this great unspo- ken instinctive call of one person for another.

Always I have longed to meet the Ross family-and when I met them I found that there was something I had not met before-a something -an attraction of their individuality for me-Don’t please think this absurd or fanciful. I never have met any man who meant so much to me-who so thoroughly I could find every sympathy with-could feel every attraction for-and who could do so much with me as you your- self. The whole history-the first Ross-the Ross individuality that has lasted so strangely had a wonderful call for me-Do you see what I mean-it means just this that a woman like the ideal Ross is my ideal woman. Well if I may say so I think that she is [the] most Ross-most like you-may I go on with this? I know her mental side well. She is the bravest woman I have met. She is the finest in thought, the most loyal. She is as proud as the devil.

It has always been my ambition to have a son-when I met your family-I longed, in perhaps a cold and theoretical way, that he should have that blood in his veins. That he should hold his head as they do -should have those queer little turns of thought that they have, that he should be loyal and brave, and true as they know how to be.

You maybe will not easily see this-I am a very ordinary person- an ordinary boy-from an ordinary school in an ordinary suburban place. But in all [my] ordinariness God gave me the appreciation of these things-I love her ... for every instinct of her blood. She is a Ross, I love her-and I am vain enough Sir to tell you that I think I love her right truly.

I will not harm her. I will wait and wait and wait for her. I am sorry that I have shocked you. I am sorry if I have lost your regard. She is your daughter, you are my ideal man, she is my ideal woman-and I am not ashamed to tell of it. I wrote to you for I couldn’t have you go away, thinking that you were leaving a fairly honest man behind you. when in reality you were leaving a man who was hiding from you that [which is] against all rules of decent life- he loved your daughter very very dearly. It was more a confession to you than an appeal for help. You have my confession-and to some extent my explanation and I am glad that you have it.

My appeal to you now is that you shall trust me still-trust me to leave it to time and to be a man and a gentleman-and I will appeal to you that if you believe these things as I do-that you will hope that time will make it right. That one day I may say to all the world she is my wife-that I may help her. protect her, work for her. fight for her. have her for my companion for life-that one day Sir-if it is not indecent-I may see that child and watch it grow and carry its head proudly, and watch it look at men and in the looking tell them all that they are his servants. Don’t be angry with me. Don’t be ashamed of me. Be just a little sorry for me and if you can-forgive me-for all this is very real to me-or I should not write to a man words that I should be ashamed to write at all.

Trust me.

Yours ever F. Wood Jones

I hope that you have been very well and will go to COCOS strong and without the regret that you have been good to a cad.

CORAL AND ATOLLS 753

A state of infatuation often inspires beautiful music, but it is not always conducive to logical thought as these letters bear witness. Who was Gertrude Clunies-Ross, the lady who inspired these letters?

GERTRUDE’S FOREBEARS John Clunies-Ross (Ross Primus) with his wife, Elizabeth, settled on Cocos-Keeling in 1827. Their eldest son, John George Clunies-Ross, was born in London and was but a young child when his father set about his enterprise of making a settlement on the islands.

This son (Ross Secundus) had been 14 years on Cocos when he fell in love with S’pia Dupong, a young Malay lady of royal Solo blood. The marriage took place in 1841. John had picked up sufficient knowledge of medicine and surgery to act capably as the settlement’s ‘doctor’. They had nine children, the eldest of whom was George (Ross Tertius). George married Inin, a member of one of the original Malay families who had come to the islands with the pioneer, Ross Primus.

Gertrude was the third of their five daughters. There were four sons. She was educated at a Catholic convent in France. All of her brothers and sisters who had the inclination were educated in either France or England, taken there by their father in a Cocos-built yacht.

In 1899, Gertrude married Wilhelm Axel Blom, a mercantile marine employed by her father. Witnesses to the ceremony included two Imans and Gertrude’s brother, Wilfred, who was the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages of the Islands. The ceremony was celebrated in accordance with Islamic traditions (Fig. 2).

GERTRUDE’S CHILDREN AND HER DIVORCE FROM BLOM

Fig. 2. A photograph taken on the atoll by Wood Jones. His own legend reads: ‘This is a group in front of Ross’ house-from pictures left to right, Miss Ross, Savage, Mrs Edmund Ross, Leggatt, Mrs Blom [Gertrude]. In front sitting is Mrs Ross. Savage and Leggatt are both ‘telegraph’ boys and both nice. The group is sitting on a 3 branched coconut tree a very rare thing where all 3 eyes have sprouted. Only 2 trunks are seen in the picture. This was taken on Christmas day [19051.’

demonstrated by a remark that Wood Jones’ mother is pur- ported to have made concerning the impending marriage: ‘he is marrying a woman already wed with five half-caste children’. To the author, this family anecdote was third hand and when recounted was 80 years old. That it survived so long shows that the vexation surrounding the marriage still lingered.

On his attitude to race and colour, Wood Jones’ marriage had a salutary effect. Not only had he to come to terms with the attitude of his mother, whom he adored, but also he had to reconsider some ideas of his own on this question. One such They had five children: Ulla Alette (b. 1899), Wilhelm Erik

(b. 1901), May Inin (b’ I9O2)7 George ‘lunies 1 9 0 5 ) 9 and Honor Britta (be December 1906 after Wood Jones’ arrival at

notion was expressed in his book coral and Atolls written before his marriage, but not published until soon aftemards.7 Although most of the book is devoted to his into he

cOcOs)’ This is a the lady who cast a Chapel of the Savoy on 11 June 1910. Her entry on the certificate of marriage appears as ‘Gertrude Clunies Blom, divorced’. In

sketch Of

upon Wood Jones and whom he married in the fauna and flora of the atoll, the first six chapters deal with the history of the islands. In the first chapter of the book is found the following statement:

1907, she added Clunies as her second given name. A search conducted by the English Divorce Registry in

London covering the years 1905 to 1910 showed no trace of a decree absolute between Gertrude and Axel Blom. One is left

It is much to be regretted that such tales [the history of Cocos-Keeling] should ever be lost to the world, for each tells a story of enterprise and hardihood, and offers a picture of the greatest of the birthrights of the Englishman-the power that is born in him to rule an alien race.

with the alternative that it was George Clunies-Ross, himself, who granted and legalized that decree absolute at an opportune time. As Governor of Cocos he had power so to do. Divorces on Cocos at that time were by mutual consent; but had to be sanctioned by the Governor.

Axel Blom stood to lose financially by the divorce and a

In the early 1900s, the British Empire, Malaya being a part, was at its height and Wood Jones, view concerning the birthrights of the Englishman was held by the vast majority of English people. An inkling as to why he should air this view in his book is revealed in Chapter 2 where he wrote:’

monetary settlement in his favour may well have been made at the time of negotiations concerning the divorce.

George [Clunies-] Ross today has all the masterful attributes of John [Clunies-] Ross a hundred years ago; has all his ability and his dexterity and his inborn power to rule.

THE QUESTION OF RACE It seems that Wood Jones’ views on the birthrights of an Englishman were, in this instance, a misguided tribute to the

Gertrude’s genealogy shows that she was three parts Malay and at the time of her marriage to Wood Jones had five children by a previous marriage. In those days, the questions of race, colour and divorce were even more vexed than they are today. This is

abiiities of George Clunies-Ross and his foiebears. Wood Jones had witnessed the day-to-day management of the islands by him for 15 months and in addition had an enormous respect for him as a person. His esteem for George Clunies-Ross prevented

754 CHRISTOPHERS

Wood Jones from perceiving the enormous incongruity of his views on the birthrights of an Englishman.

George Clunies-Ross was one-half Malay. Many of the people that he ‘ruled’ were not aliens, but copatriots of his Malay mother. There is no way of determining how rapidly Wood Jones’ views on race changed; but change they did. In 1926 he wrote:

If her (Australia’s 1 contribution to the welfare of a subject race [Abo- rigines] from whom she has taken a great continent. is to consist of no more than doles of flour and blankets, then she will deserve what she will surely earn-the scorn of the more enlightened nations and the contempt of posterity.”

And in a letter to an Australian friend in 1940, he wrote:

We live in a rotten time i n a rotten man-made (white man-made) mess. but we all have our ideals!

COCOS-KEELING Wood Jones remained on the atoll for 15 months, dwelling on one of the islets, Pulu Tikus (Rat Island). Much time was available to him for the study of the atoll and its fauna and flora and for contemplating upon how such a tiny speck of land came to exist in the midst of a great waste of ocean. He explains this in his autobiographical material?

The highest point on the island upon which I lived at the cable station was no more than 13 feet. The average height of the land above high tide level may best be appreciated by realising that it is about as high as a railway station platform is above the rails. And this is a marvel, that this inconsiderable ring of land, rising so little above sea level, is situated in the midst of the great southern rollers in the area of the South- East Trade winds.

From this narrow island ring there rises a diadem of coconut palms and these increase the height of the atoll by raising their crowns majes- tically some 60 feet above the crashing surf. My first feeling upon seeing in reality what I had so often seen in illustrations in books was to appre- ciate how utterly any picture must fail to convey the stark truth of the frailty of the whole thing. It was almost impossible to believe in its permanency. From the bridge of the CS Magnet, now anchored in the lagoon, 1 could see the gigantic rollers crashing into surf upon the outer edge of the ring and it seemed almost impossible to believe that the barrier reef could remain intact for ever. Surely some great wave, more majestic than its fellows,would succeed in overwhelming it or breaking its defences.

And, later, when ashore. I saw the tremors marked on the recording barograph as the rollers crashed on the barrier, the insecurity of the place impressed me the more: and this impression was in no way lessened by watching damp places form in the middle of the island as the high tide percolated through the porous coral fragments that formed our dry land.

But the barrier holds a wonderful secret; and an atoll -though during cyclones its windward islands may be breached and seas rush through into the lagoon - being a child of the wind and the waves, is safe from destruction at the hands of its parents. The lagoon that is enclosed by the narrow island ring is the private sea of the atoll. The entrance to the private sea is to the north-west. the leeward side of the group. This great blue-green lake is a place of comparative calm with its northern end some 30 feet in depth and its southern end shoaling from 6 feet to tide- washed coral llats. Though there are a few places in the northern part of the lagoon where a depth of 50 feet is reached. it may be said in

general that over considerably more than half of its area its depth is no more than 10 feet and here the water shades from blue to green.

Only two of the north-eastern islands are permanently inhabited. for they alone have sufficient depth of lagoon water to be approached at all seasons and on all tides. The whole of the southern half of the lagoon may be reckoned as being less than 10 feet deep, the greater part of it being available only to small boat navigation at high tide. This is a very important feature in the question of atoll formation. In 1827, Ross Primus founded his settlement on Pulu Atas (South Island). the most southern island of the ring. But before Darwin’s visit, nine years later, it had been moved to Pulu Selma (Home Island), one of the northern islets, since the shoaling of the southern end of the lagoon was pro- ceeding so rapidly that approach to the larger and more attractive southern islands had already become difficult at low tide. It is often assumed that Charles Darwin formulated his theory of ‘subsidence’ to account for the condition of fringing reefs, barrier reefs and atolls as a result of his study of the Cocos-Keeling atoll. But he himself tells us that ‘the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of South America, before I had ever seen a coral reef‘.

Cocos-Keeling was the first atoll Darwin ever saw and the only one that he ever examined. The ‘Beagle’ arrived in the lagoon in April 1836 and remained for 10 days and Darwin notes in his journal that the settlement had recently been removed from South Island because of the shallowness of the lagoon. It therefore seems all the more remarkahle that he should have claimed that the condition of the atoll clearly sup- ported his theory that it was slowly sinking ...

It was in the early part of June 1905 that I went ashore in the atoll and I remained for one unbroken spell of duty until September 30th 1906. The cable company’s quarters were situated on one of the northern islands known as Pulu Tikus or Rat Island. Pulu Tikus is not one of the more considerable islands, neither is it very attractive or fertile . . .

The reason for his visit

This absence of any real medical duties gave me ample opportunities for doing those things that had been the real reason for my visit ... I knew very well what I intended to do. First, since there appeared to be no real knowledge concerning the rate of growth of the reef-building corals, it is obvious that the question of time involved in the building of atolls and reefs can only be determined by guesswork. Secondly, corals. like the shells of molluscs, had suffered from the pseudo-scientific methods of the ‘cabinet collector’ and the museum specialist, in being studied and classified only from their dead and dried skeletons. No Victorian conchologist, although perhaps regarded as a scientific authority, cared what sort of unpleasant soft animal had built and inhabited his highly valued tropical sea-shells: and corals were served up to museum workers as whitened skeletons. from which all traces of the living polyps that had built them had been removed by decomposition and bleaching in the sun ...

The first thing to do was to become familiar with the barrier pools and reef areas that could be easily recognised at different states of the tide on any subseqent visit. In these areas coral colonies were selected and marked by copper wire bands round their branches or by pegs on their surface placed at measured intervals so that they could be re- examined from time to time. This business had to be done on rather a large scale, since damage and loss due to storms and accidents cut short many of the experiments. Also it was necessary to ensure that the records could be carried on as long as possible, for it soon became apparent that the colonies grew by fits and starts in the most irregular manner and that records made over only short periods produced most misleading impressions of the general rate of animal growth.


The second thing to do was to start at once on a campaign for observ- ing and recording the characters of the living zooids of as large a range of coral colonies as possible. This entailed the keeping of colonies under controlled conditions so that they could be observed by night when the zooids were protruded from the colony and expanded in the full state of their activities.

CORALS AND ATOLLS Wood Jones’ story concerning atoll formation was presented in his book Coral and Atolls. Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark’s assess- ment of this book as a contribution to the knowledge of the development and transformation of coral was given in his obit- uary to Wood Jones.

Although Clark had perused the book in 1912, it was not until 1951 while staying on a coral island that he studied it seriously and realized what a remarkable book it was. He pointed out that this original work done on a living coral reef was carried out by a person who had had no training in zoology other than that given during the course of study in the first year.

Professor CM Yonge, leader of the Great Barrier Reef Expe- dition of 1928-1929 informed Clark that when the members of the expedition started to work it was to this book that they turned for the best account then available of a living coral reef, and that even where they disagreed it challenged their thinking. Coral and Atolls was published in the second week of June 1910 a few days after Wood Jones’ marriage to Gertrude.

NATURE’S COLONISTS Chapters 25, 26 and 27 of Coral and Atolls concern the flora and fauna of Cocos-Keeling atoll other than that of the coral polyp. The first two of these chapters had appeared almost word for word in a series of three articles in The London Hospital Gazette in 1908 under the title of ‘Nature’s colonists’. Not only was the content of the articles of some moment, but the prose was characterized by skill and beauty. It was in these articles that Wood Jones first established his inimitable style of writing. They carry his mark of identification. Marshalled facts were spun by him into a work of art. With something important to say, Wood Jones had the capacity to say it with due regard to its significance. It should have been apparent to a discerning reader of these articles that England was harbouring a biologist of some considerable note. Certainly the journal in which they were published was an obscure one: the student’s magazine of his Alma Mater The London Hospital Medical School. Appar- ently the articles did not create a ripple in scientific circles. This was surprising enough. However, even more surprising is that they still went unheralded even when they were reproduced as part of Coral and Atolls which sold in large numbers world- wide. Certainly the canvas of Nature’s colonists is not as large as that of some of his later books, especially The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand. It is not perhaps as large as that of his paper, On the relations of the limb plexuses to the ribs and vertebral column; but yet it is large enough.

These articles do not get a mention in Wood Jones’ autobiographical material as he was not a trumpeter of his own abilities; but they give a fine story of the genesis of the flora and fauna of the atoll other than that of the coral zooid. As in some of his best writings, there are passages where one feels

that the gap between the sciences and the arts has been nar- rowed. Here are some extracts from this work:“’

Sea waifs

It is not every man. who, making for himself a home in some distant place, does it of any set purpose, or even of his own free will. The human race has provided many Robinson Crusoes, and Nature has ordained that the Robinson Crusoe method shall be the fashion of her colonizing when the lesser beasts are the colonists ...

There is little that is more interesting than the study of these sea waifs, for every single inhabitant of such a place as the atoll, named Cocos-

Keeling on maps. has a history of romance attached to it ... [These sea waifs] had the hardihood to brave 600 miles of trade

[wind]-swept ocean, or the cunning to obtain an assisted passage. The study of the dispersal of animal forms over distant tracts of land and water. is one in which English zoologists have taken a splendid part; and no-one may write of the subject, in any language, without first paying his homage to such as Darwin and Wallace. Both were men who, having travelled about the world, had seen the problem in its reality, and had come face to face with the omni-presence of animal life in apparently inaccessible places, and had wondered at the methods of its transit.

Nothing may make the problem more real than the sighting, after twelve days of hopeless sailing, of a tiny speck of land, long since invaded, tenanted, and made quick by a hardy handful of Nature’s sea waifs.

It is at once a mystery how they got there, and the dwelling for long among them must lead to some attempt to unravel the histories of their coming . . .

Flotsam

The atoll lies over six hundred miles from Java, and over five hundred from its nearest neighbour. Christmas Island.

It is obvious that there are only two routes for emigrants to such a place; a creature must either come by water. or by flying through the air; and the entire population may be separated into water borne, and wind borne, waifs. The water borne division comprises two very different sets of colonists; the one party who made the voyage by chance, and with much hardihood, at the mercy of the sea drifts; and the other that came as passengers in ships, in company with that greatest distributor of animal types-the merchant sailor men. The first party is the most worthy of study. In order to reconstruct a history of the methods of their transit, some idea must be formed of the ocean flotsam at their disposal. and of the oceanic drifts that carry the flotsam. No better method can be followed than the examination of the wave cast material of the seaward beaches; and a daily tour of a stretch of barrier reef. for a period of many months, will lead to the discovery of many potential passenger vessels. The trunks of trees are naturally the most common of all the flotsam that might serve for the colonist, and it must be remembered that a single tree trunk may be the only remaining remnant of what was once a real floating island. The very name of ‘floating island’ creates the suspicion of romance, and yet floating islands are realities. Many of the trees that fringe tropical shores-and one of the most notable fea- tures of tropical shores is the presence of dense vegetation right down to the lap of Ocean waves-have complicated root systems. so that. above ground and below, the trees tangle this way and that. and form inseparable masses . . .

A scour of the sea coast, or a river in flood by heavy rain. may undermine such a clump, tear it away. and set it adrift to sea, with all the earth still held in the meshes of the roots, all the trees standing-

156 CHRISTOPHERS

a perfect ‘floating island’. Such things happen, and the floating island i s a not an uncommon phenomenon in the straits and seas of the Malay

Archipelago. I know o f a case where. far out to sea. a submarine cable,

on being hauled to the surface. brought up with i t banana trees and portions of native houses, that had obviously gone to sea a floating

island. and had encouiitered shipwreck ... The trunks of trees are common on the seaward beaches. and each

may have carried its passenger to the atoll from some distant coastline

where its voyage was started. There i s one peculiarity about many of

these trees that makes them well adapted to the carrying of Nature’s colonists. and this peculiarity i s the shape o f the lower portions o f their trunks. Most o f the tropical trees, whose wood is not especially hard,

and which often grow to a great height. have very strong buttresses

thrown out about the bottoms o f their trunks. These buttresses are in the form of large thin wings, that taper to the trunk above, and below form

a series of compartments. like stalls i n a circular stahle. Within these

stalls much earth is held fast by the interlacing of smaller roots, and

when such a tree i s uprooted. and set adrift to sea, i t carries its earth

with i t . I t may carry i t for very great distances. and I have seen a ‘but-

tressed’ tree come ashore in the atoll, from whose base a wheelbarrow

load o f tine red earth might have been collected. I t must be remembered

that such an incident i s notable in a place where there i s no ‘earth’. save

coral reduced to sand. and decomposed vegetation in very small quan-

tities. From the roots of this tree I took small stones, and these are rarities

in a land where no stones exist. I t i s certain that such a tree would have

many tenants when i t started on i ts voyage, and i t i s not unlikely that

some would have the good fortune to survive the passage. I t offers an

explanation for the presence of a Typhlops-a small snake with an

underground habit - in the atoll . . . Concerning those plants whose seeds are hard, and fitted for a sea

journey, there are some very interesting points to be noted. On the island

beaches there are many kinds o f seeds that may be picked up any day

-there are perhaps half a dozen kinds o f which one specimen could be found, almost with certainty. in a walk along a hundred yards of beach.

Now these seeds, when picked up, and planted in the earth. wi l l grow

with great readiness; but as their leaves become recognisable, you are

at once astonished to see that they are o f a kind of which no represen-

tative may be found in all the atoll.

I t i s a strange chapter in Nature’s story. for these seeds have been

arriving at the atoll from time immemorial; they have been cast on to i t s beaches by the waves. all ready to grow, but unable to take root i n

the broken coral that composes the beaches. There i s a link in the chain

that i s missing. for there is no bird or beast that wi l l move them the

very short distance to the resting place. where they could turn centuries

of failure into a successful colonizing enterprise. The cocoa nut has

become the dominant plant o f all atolls for the reason that, where the

ocean waves toss it. there wil l i t grow; and i t sprouts green and fresh

within the lap of the waves. The smaller seeds have been aided in their

journey by hirds or by wind; but there i s nothing that wi l l give a helping

hand to the large ‘Queensland bean’ and several others of i ts kind and

assist i t over the foot or two of coral beach, that cut i t o f f forever from

any hope of sucess.

Their passage in ships

The colonists that are water borne. and that have made the passage in ships, are again of two very different companies; for some, man has

introduced deliberately into the islands. and some. despite his very best

intentions, have accompanied him on his travels.

As a general rule, i t may he said that those animals that man has

attempted to establish in the atoll, have not thriven exceedingly; - whilst

those that came against his wish, have multiplied to an unusual degree.

Whenever man takes a hand at assisting Nature in the process o f distribution of living forms, i t i s to be expected that. either his efforts

wil l result in an inconspicuous failure. or in a conspicuous disaster. Here, the efforts have been mostly failures ...

The rats

By far the most important items in the atoll fauna are the rats. and they undoubtedly came through human agency. The rats have this distinction,

that they were firmly established in the atoll before the original settle-

ment was made by man. some eighty years ago. Exactly how the original

rats came i s o f course unknown, but people had occasionally landed in

the atoll previous to 1827, and. judging from the after history, many

unfortunates had been wrecked upon i ts barrier. When the settlers

arrived, they found these rats confined to one island. and this island they

named Pulu Tikus, or Rat Island. in consequence. I t was upon this island that the original rats landed from the wreck, or were brought by man.

and there they stayed; for the channel that separates Pulu Tikus from its neighbour is deep and very swiftly running. A man may easily swim the

channel at all tides, but he wi l l have to make a long course. for the current carries him rapidly down; and a rat would surely go to sea in

any attempt at making the passage.

After the advent o f the settlers. the rats of Pulu Tikus remained the

sole representatives o f their family i n the atoll for very many years. They

were not permittcd to extend their domain beyond the limits o f their own

island. for a strict examination was made o f all the boats that went

between the different islands. They were not exterminated. for the simple

reason that the extermination of rats. by any ordinary means, even on

so tiny a strip o f land. i s quite impossible . . . I n 1878 the islands received a fresh accession of rats. The ship. ‘Robert Portner’, was wrecked in that year. and from this

wreck the atoll derived the greatest curse that has ever fallen to its lot.

Cyclones have visited the islands from time to time, and have done incalculable damage: but the steady depredations o f the rats cause far

more loss than the occasional visits of cyclones; their numbers are

legion, and their work i s continuous. The ‘Robert Portner’ rats settled on most o f the islands to the South

of Pulu Tikus. but on Pulu Tikus itself they never gained a footing. and

the ‘original’ rats o f that island remain quite distinct from the newcom- ers. The bad habits o f the invaders rapidly became notorious, and. unlike

the ‘original rat’ that did very little damage. they soon bccame the source o f the most real economical loss to the islands. The rats o f Pulu Tikus

have always been in the habit o f climbing the coconut palms. and in

some cases their offspring are reared in the crown of the palm some seventy feet from the ground: and they had learned to open the ripe nuts

that have dropped from the palms- for coconut constitutes practically the whole o f their dietary.

But the ‘Robert Portner’ rats were not content with this. and when

they had become accustomed to climbing the palms. they learned to

attack the nuts whilst they were s t i l l green. To-day, thousands of nuts

must be ruined daily by being nibbled. just where the stalk joins the

husk; and a nut that i s attacked in this way falls from the palm, and i s

quite useless for any purpose. I t seems a strange thing that these new

rats should so quickly have learned this mischievous practice, when

members o f the older colony still remain contented with the nuts that

fall naturally.

MEDICAL ARTICLE WRITTEN ON ATOLL The only medical article that Wood Jones wrote while a resident on the atoll was ‘A letter-somewhat medical,“ in which he described the article as pertaining to pseudo-medical trivialities,


and in it discusses the effects of living on such a microcosm upon the mental outlook of the residents:

First, there is the ever-present feeling that this place remains a speck of dry land by the operation of some natural process-you know not what-in the face of odds that appear so great that the turning of the balance might take place at any time and lead to its undoing. There is. too. the ocean’s encroachment and the always possible cyclone ... Now, no one will doubt that when a human being is in the presence of great natural forces, whose governing laws he knows not of, he has a curious feeling of his feebleness and dependence.

In addition to this article he discusses briefly some of the skin conditions that he encountered on the islands.

KEELING ISLAND When Wood Jones first arrived on the atoll, George Clunies- Ross (Fig. 3) was in Europe. He did not return to Cocos until late in 1905. His return meant the possible realization of a cher- ished ambition for Wood Jones. There was one island the examination of which had so far been only a dream for him. This was the Keeling Island lying more than 15 miles to the north of the Cocos group. Travels to this island were not undertaken lightly for landing on it and leaving it were dangerous proce- dures. Of the trip to this island he

Keeling is not a large island. It is about a mile long from North to South and about half that at its maximum breadth: nevertheless, it is an atoll in its own right, having a lagoon still communicating with the sea. Its pecularity is that the only possible landing place, situated on the western side, is guarded by a formidable barrier reef.

It was in June 1906, exactly a year after I had arrived in the islands, that the Governor decided to visit the island and to take me as a passenger . . .

Keeling is the home and breeding ground of vast numbers of sea birds. Among the regular breeding population are the two species of frigates, three of boobies, three of terns and one sheanvater ... none of them show the slightest fear of man or take any notice of him provided he behaves quietly and does not interfere with them. To spend the day walking among the thousands of birds sitting on their nests. on the ground, on the tops of bushes, and on the branches of high ampol trees and to have them all regard me as a friend and harmless was an emotional-almost a humiliating experience. It savours of retribution that it was in this place of profound peace that the German raider ‘Emden’ crashed to her death on the barrier in November 1914.

WOOD JONES’ DEPARTURE FROM COCOS Not long after the Keeling expedition George Clunies-Ross suffered the first symptoms of the illness that was to cause his death four years later. George had been with the working party to Pulu Luar and had suffered considerable discomfort from retention of urine:3

Fortunately, his immediate symptoms were easily alleviated and, although I thought it best to stay with him for a few days, they did not return. We talked the matter over and it was decided that, as soon as my contract with the Cable Company had come to an end. I would take him to London for advice and treatment. I applied to the Company for permission to stay in the islands until the end of the year, but was told that the CS ‘Patrol’ was preparing to go to sea to conduct some cable repairs and that I was needed to go with her. This verdict meant that on

Fig. 3. George Clunies-Ross (c. 1908).

September 30th 1906 I had to leave the islands and I started on the dreadful pilgrimage of wallowing in the ‘Magnet’ back to Batavia and on to Singapore.

After only a short stay in Singapore I left in the CS ‘Patrol’ and, sailing by way of the Rhio Straits and Java Sea, next to Bangoewanghie at the eastern extremity of Java ...

The next stop for cable repairs was at a point 20 miles due south of the island of Sumbawa. It was here that one of the highlights of the journey occurred; he saw a specimen of the great ribbon-fish (Regdieus pacificus), the creature that has possibly given origin to the legend of the sea-serpent.

When the work on the Sumbawa cable was finished the ship sailed for the Fly Islands; arriving there on 3 November 1906. The CS ‘Patrol’ continued on to Sydney via Thursday Island, Townsville and Bri~bane.~

The purpose of the journey was the repair of a fault that had developed in the cable between Sydney and Wellington in New Zealand. The fault had been located as being some eight hundred miles from Sydney in the deep waters of the Tasman sea.

The repair to the cable here was the turning point of the journey. The return to Singapore was via Sydney, Brisbane, and Thursday Island.

BACKTOCOCOSANDTHENCETOENGLAND As soon as he arrived in Singapore, Wood Jones’ contract with the Cable Company terminated and he was now free to fulfil his promise- namely to accompany George Clunies-Ross to England for medical advice and treatment. Therefore he took

758 CHRISTOPHERS

the first available boat out of Singapore bound for Batavia. At Tonjong Priok in Batavia was a yacht (the Gondola) owned by George Clunies-Ross waiting to take him to Cocos-Keeling.

Wood Jones reached the atoll at the end of January 1907 where he stayed with George Clunies-Ross for a short time to make sure that his patient was fit for the long journey to England. On 25 February 1907, Wood Jones and his patient accompanied by Wilfred Clunies-Ross left the Cocos for England.

They made the return journey to Batavia on the ‘Gondola’ and there joined the Dutch mail ship SS ‘Gedeh’ which took them to England. By the time they reached London in March, George was well enough to go to his old rooms in Piccadilly and lead a normal life. Wood Jones arranged for him to consult Mr Hurry Fenwick, a renal surgeon, to whom Wood Jones had been a ‘dresser’ as a student.

GERTRUDE ALSO LEAVES COCOS Just 23 days after Wood Jones had left Cocos with George Clunies-Ross, Gertrude with her five children also left for England. Her youngest child, Honor, was then just 4 months old. Her husband, Axel, remained on the atoll as an employee of her father. Neither Gertrude nor any of her five children ever set foot on Cocos again. Prior to her leaving, her father transferred 50 shares of ten pounds each in the Christmas Island Phosphate Company Limited to each of his five daughters. This gave Ger- trude some degree of financial independence. About the time of this settlement, the surname of her children was changed from Blom to Clunies-Ross. As far as is known, there is no deed in existence either in England or in the Cocos-Keeling Islands which records this change of name. It is mentioned because readers of Wood Jones’ book, Seabirds Simplified, may otherwise be puzzled by the inscription in this book which reads: ‘To Bruce Axel Clunies-Ross-my grandchild’.

Why did Gertrude leave the atoll at this time never to return? Was it in order to further the education of the children? Her eldest child, Ulla, was already 7 years old. Was it to distance herself from her husband, Axel? Was it to be near Wood Jones? Of these possibilities, the latter seems the most likely. On his return to England, Wood Jones chose to live with his mother at the family home in Enfield. Gertrude chose to live in the same suburb of London.

WOOD JONES: FROM MARCH 1907 TILL HIS MARRIAGE

Soon after his return to England from Cocos in March 1907, Wood Jones resumed his teaching position at The London Hos- pital Medical College, this time as a fully-fledged and paid demonstrator in anatomy under Arthur Keith. It was not to be for long; 7 months later he received a message from Grafton Elliot Smith in Cairo requesting assistance with archaeological work in Nubia. Elliot Smith was the then Professor of Anatomy at the Government School of Medicine at Cairo. Wood Jones left post haste for Egypt and was met by Elliot Smith in Cairo. From here they set out for Shellal in Nubia and were already camped and working there by the last week in October 1907.

One reason why Wood Jones so readily accepted the invitation to Nubia may have been his desire to distance himself ohvsicallv from the obiect of his infatuation. Gertrude.

Just before Wood Jones left for Nubia, Gertrude presented him with a book entitled In Malay Forests by George Maxwell. Inscribed in the book is ‘to F. W. J. from G. C. Blom Oct 16th 1907’. Scribbled in Wood Jones’ handwriting in the book is: ‘A boatman in the habit of plying up and down the Nile sees in a riverside village a woman and falls in love with her. Cames on intrigue . . . ’.

In May 1908, Wood Jones returned to London and not long afterwards he was appointed as Medical Officer to a private asylum, The Priory [Psychiatric] Hospital, Priory Lane, Roe- hampton, a suburb of London (Fig.4). He resided there until September or October 1909.

In 1909, Elliot Smith resigned from his post in Cairo and accepted the Chair of Anatomy at Manchester. He took up duties in the northern Autumn of 1909 and immediately invited Wood Jones to join his staff as Lecturer in Anatomy. Wood Jones accepted the invitation.

MOVEMENTS OF GEORGE CLUNIES-ROSS 1907-1910

In order to understand Wood Jones’ next deed, it is necessay to outline briefly the details of George Clunies-Ross’ movements after his arrival in England in March 1907. He remained in England until April of 1908, spending most of this time living at his rooms in Piccadilly. It was to this address that Wood Jones sent the letters from Nubia declaring his love for Gertrude.

When Gertrude’s eldest daughter, Ulla, became ill with sus- pected pulmonary tuberculosis in February 1908, George Clunies-Ross bought a house on the Isle of Wight and invited

Fig. 4. Wood Jones in the grounds of The Priory [Psychiatric] Hos- oital. RoehamDton.


Gertrude and her children to stay with him. He did this believ- ing that fresh air was good therapy for Ulla’s ailment. He named the house New Selma after Pulu Selma (Home Island), the islet on Cocos where the Ross family lived. It was his inten- tion, when he returned to Cocos, to allow Gertrude to remain there.

News reached him late in March 1908 that a cyclone had caused damage to the Cocos Islands. Six thousand palms were blown down and many of his yachts were destroyed. He left England for Cocos early in April 1908. This cyclone was nothing to the one that struck on 17 November 1909. On that day the barometer fell to 27.92 inches (9454 hectopascals); 800 000 trees were destroyed, and only five buildings remained standing. George Clunies-Ross’ ill health was made worse by the hardships caused by this cyclone.

A MISSION OF MERCY In April 1910 George Clunies-Ross fell seriously ill and was suffering severe pain. He sent an urgent plea for help to Wood Jones in Manchester. It was clear that he needed medical treatment not available on the atoll. Wood Jones left England immediately to bring George back to England for treatment. He had been at Manchester for only 7 months.

Before Wood Jones left England, he and Gertrude had decided that on his return they would be married. By this time, she had obtained her divorce. In order to save time, arrange- ments had been made for George to be taken to Java and to be met there by Wood Jones. When Wood Jones examined him, it was obvious that he was a desperately sick man. The story of his return is poignantly told by Wood Jones in his autobiographical material. There were times during the trip when he wondered whether George would survive the journey.

It was on this journey and at the southern end of the Indian Ocean that Wood Jones saw the ‘awe-inspiring’ Halley’s comet. Later in the trip, 6 May, a wireless message was received that Edward VII had died. As a special concession and as an act of mercy, the Captain agreed to divert the ship to Dover so that George might obtain his medical treatment that little bit sooner.

Gertrude was at Dover to meet them. George was immediately taken to London for emergency surgery by Mr Huny Fenwick to relieve his symptoms. On the homeward journey, Wood Jones had told George that he and Gertrude intended to many and to this he had given his blessing. When George was discharged from hospital, he was taken to his house in Ventor on the Isle of Wight, and there, with nursing assistance, was cared for by Gertrude.

within this very restricted area and so I had to take up my quarters in the Savoy Hotel. I started my work at St Thomas’s with [Professor Fred- erick] Parsons and in order to arrange the business of my appointment had an interview with G. Q. Roberts (‘Curly’), the superintendent who was an old friend of mine since he had been House Governor at the London Hospital when I was a student. He told me what my salary as Parsons’s assistant would be and asked me where I was living. When I told him that my address was ‘first floor, Savoy Hotel’, he was too polite to express any opinion as to it being a suitable residence for a demonstrator of anatomy, but he asked in a rather whimsical way if I were satisfied with the accommodation. I told him it seemed to be a decent sort of place and not too far from the medical school; but I refrained from adding that I had grave doubts about being able to afford it long enough to comply with the legal term of residence. As things turned out my money lasted long enough for me to qualify for marriage in the Royal Chapel but when, after the ceremony, it was decided to have a small meal there, I had to ask a friend who came to the wedding to help me with the bill. I started my classes during the week in which I came back to England and arriving at the anatomy school on the morning of June 12th I found a note from Parsons, written on the loth, asking me to take his classes next day, since he was unable to be at the Medical School to take the Fellowship men. But I too had been absent. and absent without notice on the eleventh. Later in the day I confessed this to Parsons and told him that I had not taken his classes. He asked me if there were any important reason for my absence and I had to own up that, since my probationary period of residence within the precincts of the Savoy had expired, I had taken the day off to get married. He accepted the excuse as being adequate and I was forgiven. But living within the precincts of the Savoy was not the only thing I had to do before I got married. George [Clunies-] Ross had been a schoolboy at Elizabeth College in Guernsey and he remembered Victor Hugo [Fig. 51 and had received many kindnesses from Madam. Hugh Chapman in one of OUT talks before I was married had mentioned this and had gone on

THEIR MARRIAGE Wood Jones tells of their marriage in his autobiographical material:’

It was now clear that if we were to be married while he [George Clunies- Ross] was still living there was no time to be lost. To our way of thinking there was no finer parson in London than the Revd Hugh Chapman and no finer place to be married in than the Royal Chapel of the Savoy. We had set our hearts on this and Hugh Chapman proved himself more loveable, more helpful and more humanly understanding than even we had imagined him to be. But .in order to be married in the Royal Chapel of the Savoy, it was necessary that I should take up residence within the precincts of the Savoy. I had no time to spend searching for residences Fig. 5. Victor Hugo.

760 CHRISTOPHERS

to discuss 'Les Miserables'. I had to own up that. though I had more than once started to read it. I had never succeeded in finishing it. He was so shocked at this that he made it a condition of marrying us that I should first read i t from beginning to end. As a reward for doing this he not only married us but he gave me a copy of the book inscribed, 'To Medico. from Padre on the occasion of his marriage at the Savoy or the Mecca of Bohemia, June I I . 1910'.

DEATH OF GEORGE CLUNIES-ROSS On 7 July 1910, George Clunies-Ross died on the Isle of Wight. Some 300 years before, William Keeling had embarked from here on his voyages of discovery. Keeling was buried at Car- isbrook on the Isle of Wight while nearby in Bonchurch church- yard George Clunies-Ross found his resting place. This, however, was not to be his final resting place, for on 8 February 1915 the remains of George Clunies-Ross were exhumed from Bonchurch and placed on board the schooner 'Rainbow' for re- interment on Cocos-Keeling.

Wood Jones dedicated the re-issue of Coral and Atolls (191 2 ) to him and a photograph of him is the frontispiece of the book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the details of Gertrude Wood Jones' children, the author is indebted to Mrs Linda Hargreaves (nee Clunies-Ross) of Horsham, England. The author is also indebted to her for the photograph of George Clunies-Ross. She is the great-grand niece of Gertrude Wood Jones and is the custodian of the Clunies-Ross' family history and the compiler of the Clunies- Ross' genealogy.

John Clunies-Ross kindly gave permission to quote excerpts from the correspondence between Wood Jones and George Clunies-Ross. The author would like to thank The Royal College of Surgeons of England for permission to publish material from their library.

The Medical Club of The London Hospital Medical College

readily granted permission to use material from The London Hospital Gazerre. The author is most grateful to Mrs Rosemary Mulder for word processing the manuscript.

Dr Allen Christophers made made many helpful suggestions regarding the final presentation of the manuscript.

The map of COCOS (Keeling) Islands is Commonwealth Copyright 1973, AUSLIG-Australia's national mapping agency. It has been reproduced with the permission of the General Manager, Australian Surveying and Land Information Group, Department of Administrative Services, Canberra, ACT, Australia.

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REFERENCES Wood Jones F. A visit to a wild beast show. The London Hos- pital Gazette. 1905, 11: 204-6. Wood Jones F. Letter to Cecelia Keith, 28 May 1905. Original lodged in the Wood Jones Collection in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Wood Jones F. Autobiographical material (c. 1950). Lodged in the Wood Jones Collection in the Library of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Wood Jones F. Letter to George Clunies-Ross. 14 February 1908. Typed copy held by John Clunies-Ross. Clunies-Ross G. Letter to Wood Jones, 1908. Holograph copy held by John Clunies-Ross. Wood Jones F. Letter to George Clunies-Ross, 5 March 1908. Typed copy held by John Clunies-Ross. Wood Jones F. Coral and Atolls. London: Love11 Reeve and Co., 1910. Wood Jones F. Lessons learned abroad, (iii) Among the modern redskins. How a primitive people may be saved. The Register, Adelaide, 1926: May 22: 13. Wood Jones F. Letter to Edward Ford, 1940. Original held by author. Wood Jones F. Nature's colonists ( in three parts). The London Hospital Gazette. 1908; 15: 69-72, 103-107, 129-130. Wood Jones F. A letter-somewhat medical. The London Hospital Gazette 1905; 12: 59-63.