Dr Handasyde Duncan at the 19th Century frontline meeting disease threat coming through Port Adelaide
Dr Handayside (in a portrait by Townsend Duryea) was a strong proponent of the need for a permanent quaratine station at Torrens Island, near Port Adelaide, to meet the threat of incoming disease through the busy port in the 19th Century.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
The scholarly Handayside Duncan, as Port Adelaide’s first doctor and immigration office for South Australia in the 1840s, took on the challenging frontline defence against disease coming in from overseas.
Born at Glasgow, Scotland, in 1811, Duncan the first part of his medical education at Glasgow University of Glasgow, and obtained his degree in 1831, before the age of 21. In Paris, he learned to use the newly-devised stethoscope before travelled through the south of France on foot and continued his studies in Germany. In 1836, he became a fellow of the faculty of physicians and surgeons of Glasgow, licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1839, and a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
He settled for two years in Bath where he married but England’s damp climate affected his health and he decided to abandon his profession and turn to farming in Australia. He arrived on the Katherine Stewart Forbes at Adelaide’s Holdfast Bay in 1839. Having bought a small farm at St Mary's, South Road, near the River Sturt, Dr. Duncan put up a prefabricated Manning's Cottage brought from England, and, with some servants, began farming.
The six-year farming venture was unsuccessful and, in 1841, Duncan was gazetted consulting physician and surgeon to the new Adelaide Hospital. He was an original member of the Medical Board of South Australia in 1844, and third of the original seven on its medical register. In 1845, he applied to be resident medical officer at the Burra mines and, when rejected, set up in practice at Port Adelaide.
Although from a rigid Presbyterian tradition, Duncan became an enthusiastic Anglican. In Adelaide he attended Trinity Church on North Terrace, Adelaide city, and became a close friend of colonial chaplain Charles Howard and his successor James Farrell. At Port Adelaide, Duncan was a leading light at St Paul's church and later its synod representative . In 1846, he joined the committee of the church society that allocated the Anglican share of state aid to religion, and he was appointed by lieutenant governor Frederick Rob to the first South Australian board of education. He was also active in establishing the Collegiate School of St Peter. In 1853 he became a Freemason and was later worshipful master of the Lodge of Unity at Port Adelaide.
In 1849, Duncan had been appointed health officer and assistant colonial surgeon at Port Adelaide and, soon after, immigration agent. Next year his vigorous views on education and state aid to churches, together with appeals for colonial investment and emigration to a healthy climate, appeared in his The Colony of South Australia (London, 1850). His severe criticism of the quality of immigrants in 1851-55 brought strong rebuffs from the land and emigration commissioners in London.
Duncan’s first major incoming disease challenge came in 1855 when immigrant ship, the Taymouth Castle, arrived off the Semaphore, with several cases of smallpox. Judicious quarantine stamped out the disease. In 1877, the British Enterprise brought smallpox, measles, typhus, and scarlatina. With the South Australian authorites resisting building a permanent quarantine station on Torrens Island, the hulk Fitzjames, later used as a boys’ reformatory, was used, along with several more vessels, to divide the healthy passengers from the sick.
The quarantine cost to the colony to South Australia was between £10,000 and £12,000. Although the disease took several fatal cases within a mile of the shore, the disease was eradicated and stopped form entering the province. Duncan’s strong case for a Torrens Island quarantine station was eventually answered in 1877. But the strain of the British Enterprise case – aside from having endured the death of three wives – took its toll on Duncan's failing health and he died on February 24, 1878, aged 66.
