Medical men and the sinking of the RMS Leinster

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Leinster. A mail boat on the Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) – Holyhead route, the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine just outside Dublin bay.  Over 500 people lost their lives in the sinking of the Leinster, the greatest single loss of life in the Irish Sea.

Nine days after the tragedy The Lancet reported that ‘at least three medical men were on board and have not since been traced, and several nurses have also disappeared’. Unfortunately, the names of the nurses are not given, but the three medical men are named; Captain Digby Burns, Dr R E Lee and Sir W Henry Thompson.(1)

Digby Burns was born in Dublin in 1884, he was educated at Mountjoy School, before studying medicine. He graduated from RCPI and RCSI in 1912. Burns joined the Royal Army Medical Corp and served in France from 1916. Robert Ernest Lee was a contemporary of Burns. Born in co Wicklow in 1883, he graduated in medicine from Trinity College Dublin in 1911. Like Burns he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in France between 1915 and 1917. Presumably both men were returning from home leave when they we lost with the sinking of the Leinster. The third medical man to be lost with the Leinster, Sir William Henry Thompson, was also on the ship because of his war work. 

Thompson, originally from Granard Co. Longford, studied mathematics and medicine at Queen’s College Galway, graduating in 1883. Thompson spent most of his professional life in teaching first as anatomy demonstrate at TCD, then as Professor of Physiology at Queen’s College, Belfast, before returning to Trinity as Chair of the Institute of Medicine.  In 1916 Thompson wrote to the College to inform them that he intended to take up a post as an assistant at a Scottish asylum to 'take the place of the younger medical men who are called up for military service', in addition to his work in Trinity. Trinity had approved Thompson's plan, and he asked the College to grant him leave of absence as a College Fellow, which would allow him to leave for Scotland.(2) 

Thompson’s war service was not confined to work in Scotland. He was soon appointed to the Ministry of Food in London as a scientific adviser. There he carried out experiments into the nutritional values of foods which were ‘of great national importance to the Food Controller in the drafting of schemes for the rationing of the food of the nation’.(3)  His contribution to the war effort was recognised in January 1918 when he was knighted. It was to attend a meeting at the Ministry of Food that Thompson was travelling from Dublin to London on 10th October on the ill-fated RMS Leinster.

References

(1) The Loss of the Leinster, The Lancet, 19 October 1918

(2) Letter from William Henry Thompson, RCPI/2/3/1/58/T74

(3) Obituary - Sir W Henry Thompson, British Medical Journal, 19 October 1918