Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Ewing George Thomson was born at Wallsend, near Newcastle, on 10 June, 1888. His father, Ewing James Thomson (1853 -1918), had migrated to Australia from Scotland, and married Margaret Martin (1857-1937) in Sydney in 1885, the same year that he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Ewing Jnr. was the eldest of their three children (the others being brothers Roy and Noel). He spent his childhood growing up in the various NSW and Victorian country centres where his father had been posted as a minister – Wallsend (ca. 1888-1892), Euroa (ca. 1892-1897), Warren (ca. 1897-1900), Cowra (ca. 1900-1906), and then suburban Manly, in Sydney, where the family appear to have lived from about the time that Ewing Thomson Snr. was attached to the Gladesville Presbyterian church (ca. 1906-1908).

Ewing Thomson Jnr. gained his secondary education at Scots College in Sydney, by virtue of a scholarship system provided for the sons of Presbyterian clergy. In 1906, he went on to the University of Sydney, where he studied medicine, and graduated with a M.B., Ch.M. (Hons.) in 1910. During his time at the University of Sydney, he also resided at St Andrew’s College. According to family sources, the cost of his education at the University of Sydney was paid for by an anonymous benefactor from his father’s parish.

Following graduation, Thomson spent 1911-1912 as a resident medical officer at Sydney Hospital. He then spent part of 1912-1914 working in a medical practice in the small NSW country town of Dungog. Then, in early 1914, he moved to Rockhampton to work for the pioneering and innovative Rockhampton medical practitioner, Dr Vivian Voss (1860-1940). In April 1915, he married Alice Ethel (‘Effie’) Hooper (1891-1969), whose father then owned ‘Esher’ station, at Westwood, near Rockhampton.

During World War I, Thomson served in the Australian Army Medical Corps, as a Captain. His service file (available on-line at National Archives Australia) indicates that he enlisted in the AAMC reserve on 17 July, 1915, and was appointed to the rank of Captain on 1 May, 1916. During 1916 he served as a MO on troopships travelling between Suez and Australia: Clan McGillivray A46 (Brisbane-Suez, May-June 1916); Surada A52 (Suez-Jeddah-Port Sudan-Colombo, June-July 1916); Shropshire A9 (Colombo-Melbourne, July-August 1916).

Thomson enlisted in the AIF on 6 December, 1916 (in effect a transfer from the reserves). He then departed Sydney on RMS Orontes, bound for England, on 19 December, 1916. Following his arrival at Plymouth in February 1917, he then underwent training before embarking for France, where he was to join the 10th Field Ambulance Corps. He was subsequently attached to the 42nd Battalion, whose ranks included a number of men from the Rockhampton and wider central Queensland region. He served with the 42nd Battalion from early June 1917, during the Battle of Messines, through until late April 1918, when the battalion was hastily deployed near Heilly, to hold a breach in the Allied line. Per Thomson’s diary account of events, early in the morning of 24 April 1918, his aid post received a direct hit from a German artillery round during a massive decoy bombardment. Somehow he survived the mayhem, and despite being severely gassed and coming under constant artillery fire, he spent a good part of the day treating and evacuating the wounded, for which he was awarded the Military Cross. However, the following day he succumbed to his exposure to gas, and was evacuated. His service file and diaries indicate that after he had recovered sufficiently, Thomson briefly served with the 11th Field Ambulance during May-June 1918. He then went on leave to England, where he underwent a medical examination and was found to be unfit for active service. He then spent the remainder of the war on light duties - initially as a MO at ?No. 1 Training Squadron, Minchinhampton, and then as a MO at the 2nd Australian Auxiliary Hospital, Southall. He returned to Australia on the Mervada, which departed from Cardiff in early January 1919, and arrived in Australia in February 1919.

After returning to Australia, Thomson established a practice at Bundaberg in ca. 1920. During his time at Bundaberg he and his wife Effie had their two children, Alan and Margaret (who were actually born in Brisbane).

In January 1928, Thomson became the central figure in the Bundaberg tragedy, when twelve children who he had inoculated for diphtheria suddenly became ill and died. The subsequent Royal Commission which investigated the tragedy found that the deaths were caused by staphylococcal infection, which had resulted from contamination of the bottle of diphtheria toxin anti-toxin (T A-T) which Thomson used to vaccinate the children, the bacteria probably having been introduced by Thomson at some stage in the vaccination process. However, the train of events was complex. Due to concerns over the effects of injecting an anti-bacterial agent, the vaccine manufacturer (Commonwealth Serum Laboratories) had recently ceased the practice of adding a preservative to its vaccines. Accordingly, the batch of diphtheria T A-T issued to Thomson did not contain a preservative. This meant that the individual bottles of T A-T in the batch were intended for short-term use only, and that they were unsuitable for extended use as had hitherto been the case. However, due to a breakdown in communications, Thomson was not notified of this, with the result that he continued as he had done previously, using the same bottle of T A-T for a series of inoculation sessions spanning several days. This was to prove fatal given Thomson’s apparently imperfect sterilisation/vaccination procedures.

According to family sources, Thomson was devastated by the deaths of the children at Bundaberg in 1928, and at the time he evidently gave a great deal of thought to quitting medical practice. Notably, Thomson appears to have never accepted primary responsibility for the 1928 Bundaberg tragedy, but rather, saw himself as an unwitting agent. Thomson’s view was to the effect that had he been informed that the batch of T A-T which had been issued to him was intended only for short term use, then he would have changed his vaccination procedures accordingly, and the tragedy would never have occurred.

Whilst Thomson was perhaps treated very lightly by the Royal Commission and by the various medical authorities, per family sources, in the year or so following the tragedy Thomson recognised that he had lost a critical level of confidence within the wider Bundaberg community, and he eventually decided that it would be best if he left Bundaberg and made a new start. In ca. 1930 he and his family then relocated to Brisbane, where he brought Dr Glynn Connolly’s practice at Racecourse Rd, Ascot. During his time at Ascot, Thomson appears to have put the 1928 Bundaberg tragedy behind him, and per family sources, he ran a successful suburban practice. In his spare time he was a keen bridge player and on race days he was a regular at Ascot and Doomben.

During World War II Thomson served in the Australian army in an honorary capacity whilst also keeping his Racecourse Rd practice running. At one point he served as a MO at Redbank army camp. He later also evidently served as a MO on troopships (or possibly hospital ships) in the Pacific theatre. Thomson died unexpectedly in Brisbane on 23 November, 1946. He was aged 58. According to family sources he died of cardiac failure, supposedly having never fully regained his health after being gassed during World War I - though the fact that he was a heavy smoker and somewhat overweight might not have helped matters.


Thomson’s full name was evidently Ewing Francis George Thomson, but for some reason, most official records have him as ‘Ewing George Thomson’, etc. For what it’s worth, for much of his life he was widely known to family and friends as ‘Tommy’.


SOURCES:

Family sources (ie. my late mother and father)

Thomson’s WW1 diaries ; Various letters in Thomson’s collection involving his time at the University of Sydney and Sydney Hospital

My source re Ewing James Thomson (Thomson’s father): James Cameron, Centenary History of the Presbyterian Church in New South Wales, Sydney : Angus & Robertson,1905

Australian War Memorial records available on-line ; Thomson’s service records available on-line at National Archives Australia. To date I haven’t managed to establish details re his service number.

NSW BDMs ; QLD BDMs ; USYD records available on-line ; Trove

Unfortunately Thomson’s collection contains nothing on the 1928 Bundaberg Tragedy. He evidently kept a file of newspaper clippings involving the tragedy and subsequent Royal Commission, and he might well have kept other material as well - however these were destroyed by my father some time after Thomson’s death in 1946.

Over the years, the 1928 Bundaberg Tragedy has been the subject of numerous newspaper and journal articles. One very readable journal article by H.F. Akers and S.A.T. Porter titled ‘Bundaberg’s Gethsemane: the tragedy of the inoculated children’ appears in the RHSQ Journal Vol 20/7 (August 2008). It is available on-line via the UQ espace library UQ_PV_152716.pdf