W. H. R. Rivers
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| W. H. R. Rivers | |
.jpg) Photograph of Rivers taken by Henry Maull
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| Born | March 12, 1864 Chatham, Kent |
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| Died | June 4, 1922 (aged 58) Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge |
| Residence | Kent, London and Cambridge |
| Nationality |  English |
| Fields | Anthropology Ethnology Neurology Psychiatry Psychology |
| Institutions | University College, London University of Cambridge Craiglockhart War Hospital |
| Alma mater | University of London Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital |
| Doctoral students | Charles Samuel Myers William McDougall John Layard Robert H. Thouless William James Perry |
| Known for | 1898 Torres Strait Islands expedition Experiments on nerve regeneration with Henry Head Treating 'shell-shocked' soldiers during World War I |
| Influenced | Siegfried Sassoon Robert Graves Frederic Bartlett |
| Notable awards | Honorary M.A from the University of Cambridge, 1897 Croonian Lecturer, 1906 Royal Medal, 1915 |
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William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS, (March 12, 1864 - June 4, 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work with shell-shocked soldiers during World War I. Rivers' most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon. He is also famous for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898, and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship.
[edit] Biography
[edit] Family background
Rivers was born in 1864 at Constitution Hill, Chatham, Kent, son of Elizabeth Hunt (16th October 1834- 13th November 1897) and Henry Frederick Rivers (7th January 1830– 9th December 1911).
Records from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries show the Rivers family to be solidly middle-class with many Cambridge, Church of England and Royal Navy associations,[1] the most famous of which were Midshipman William Rivers and his father Gunner Rivers who both served aboard HMS Victory.[1]
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The senior Rivers, also called William, was the master gunner aboard The Victory and it is thanks to his commonplace book (now kept in the Royal Naval Museum library in Portsmouth) that many of the thought of the sailors aboard Nelson’s flagship are preserved.[2] Midshipman Rivers, claimed to be ‘the man who shot the man who fatally wounded Lord Nelson’[1] proved himself to be a model of heroism in the Battle of Trafalgar. In the course of his duties, the seventeen-year-old midshipman’s foot was almost completely blown off by a grenade, left attached to him ‘by a Piece of Skin abought 4 inch above the ankle’.[2] Rivers asked first for his shoes, then told the gunner’s mate to look after the guns and informed Captain Hardy that he was going down to the cockpit. Nelson remarked, ‘Hardy, mind he is provided for. It is my Desire.’[2] The leg was then sawn off, without anaesthetic, four inches below the knee. According to legend, he did not cry out once during the amputation nor during the consequent sealing of the wound with hot tar.[2] When Gunner Rivers, anxious about his son’s welfare, went to the cockpit to ask after him to young man called out from the other side of the deck, ‘Here I am, Father, nothing is the matter with me; only lost my leg and that in a good cause.’[2] After the Battle, the senior Rivers wrote a poem about his remarkable son entitled ‘Lines on a Young Gentleman that lost his leg onboard the Victory in the Glorious action at Trafalgar’:
| “ | May every comfort Bless thy future life,
And smooth thy cares with fond and tender wife. |
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Born to another naval Rivers, Lt. William Rivers, R.N., then stationed at Deptford,[1] Henry Rivers followed many family traditions in being educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and entering the church.[1] Having earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1857, he was ordained as a Church of England priest in 1858,[1] a career that would span almost 50 years until, in 1904, he was forced to tender his resignation due to ‘infirmities of sight and memory’.[3]
In 1863, having obtained a curacy at Chatham in addition to a chaplain’s post, Henry Rivers was in a position to marry Elizabeth Hunt who was living with her brother James in Hastings, not far from Chatham.[1]
The Hunts, like the Riverses, were an established naval and Church of England family.[1] One of those destined for the pulpit was Thomas (1802-1851), but some quirk of originality set him off into an unusual career.[1] While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Thomas Hunt had a friend who stammered badly and his efforts to aid the afflicted student led him to leave the University without taking a degree in order to make a thorough study of speech and its defects.[4] He built up a good practise as a speech therapist and was patronised by Sir John Forbes MD FRS, who sent him pupils for twenty four years.[4] Hunt’s most famous case came about in 1842 when George Pearson, the chief witness in the case respecting the attempt on the life of Queen Victoria made by John Francis, was brought into court he was incapable of giving his evidence. However, after just a fortnight's instruction from Hunt he spoke easily, a fact certified by the sitting magistrate.[4] Hunt died in 1851, survived by his wife Mary and their two children. His practise was then passed on to his son, James.[5]
James Hunt (1833-1869) was an exuberant character, giving to each of his ventures his boundless energy and self-confidence.[1] Taking up his father’s legacy with great zeal, by the age of 21 Hunt had published his compendious work, "Stammering and Stuttering, Their Nature and Treatment". This went into six editions during his lifetime and was reprinted again in 1870, just after his death, and for an eighth time in 1967 as a landmark in the history of speech therapy.[1] In the introduction to the 1967 edition of the book, Elliot Schaffer notes that in his short lifetime James Hunt is said to have treated over 1,700 cases of speech impediment, firstly in his father’s practise and later at his own institute, Ore House near Hastings,[6] which he set up with the aid a doctorate he had purchased in 1856 from the University of Giessen in Germany.[7]
In later, expanded editions, "Stammering and Stuttering" begins to reflect Hunt’s growing passion for anthropology exploring, as it does, the nature of language usage and speech disorders in non-European peoples.[1] In 1856, Hunt had joined the Ethnological Society of London and by 1859 he was its joint secretary.[1] He was not, however, a popular man within the society as many of the members disliked his attacks on religious and humanitarian agencies represented by missionaries and the anti-slavery movement.[7]
As a result of the antagonism, Hunt founded the Anthropological Society and became its president,[7] a position that would be taken up by his nephew almost sixty years later.[8] It was mainly to do with Hunt’s efforts that the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) accepted anthropology in 1866.[1]
Even by Victorian standards, Hunt was a decided racist.[1] His paper "On a Negro’s Place in Nature", delivered before the BAAS in 1863, was met with hisses and catcalls.[7] What Hunt saw as “a statement of the simple factsâ€[9] was in fact a defence of the subjection and slavery of African-Americans and a support of the belief in the plurality of human species.[7]
In addition to his extremist views, Hunt also led his society to incur heavy debts.[1] The controversies surrounding his conduct told on his health and, on the 29th of August 1869, Hunt died of ‘inflammation of the brain’ leaving a widow, Henrietta Maria, and five children.[7]
Hunt’s speech therapy practise was passed onto Hunt’s brother-in-law, Henry Rivers, who had been working with him for some time.[7] With the practise came many of Hunt’s established patients, most notably The Reverend Charles L. Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) who had been a regular visitor to Ore House.[10]
To his nephew William, Hunt had left his books though a young Rivers had refused them, thinking that they would be of no use to him.[11]
[edit] Early life
William Halse Rivers Rivers was the oldest of four children, with his siblings being brother Charles Hay (29th August 1865- 8th November 1939) and sisters Ethel Marian (30th October 1867- 4th February 1943) and Katharine Elizabeth (1871-1939).
William, known as 'Willie' throughout his childhood,[1] appears to have taken his Christian name from his famous uncle of Victory fame, as well as from a longstanding family tradition whereby the eldest son of every line would be baptised by that name.[1] The origin of ‘Halse’ is unclear, though it is possible that there is some naval connection as it has been suggested that it could have been the name of someone serving alongside his uncle.[1] Slobodin states that it is probable that the second 'Rivers' entered his name as a result of a clerical error on the baptismal certificate but since the register is filled in by his father’s hand and he was to perform the ceremony, one would think it unlikely that a mistake would have been made in this case.[12] Slobodin is correct to note that there is a mistake on the registry of his birth but since his name was changed from the mistaken ‘William False Rivers Rivers’[13] to its later form, it seems probable that ‘Rivers’ was intended to appear as a given name as well as a surname.
Rivers suffered from a stammer that never truly left him, he also had no sensory memory although he was able to visualise to an extent if dreaming, in a half-waking, half-sleeping state or when feverish.[14] This had not always been the case; Rivers notes that in his early life- specifically before the age of five- his visual imagery was far more definite than it became in later life and perhaps as good as that of the average child.[14]
At first, Rivers had concluded that his loss of visual imagery had come about as a result of his lack of attention and interest in it.[14] However, as he later came to realise, while images from his later life frequently faded into obscurity, those from his infancy still remained vivid.[14]
As Rivers notes in Instinct and the Unconscious, one manifestation of his lack of visual memory was his inability to visualise any part of the upper floor of the house he lived in until he was five. This visual blank is made even more significant by the fact that Rivers was able to describe the lower floors of that particular house with far more accuracy than he had been able to with any house since and, although images of later houses were faded and incomplete, no memory since had been as inaccessible as that of the upper floor of his early home.[14] With the evidence that he was presented with, Rivers was led to the conclusion that something had happened to him on the upper floor of that house, the memory