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JOLLY Wallace Wilson MS FRACS MRCS LRCP

1908-1978

Wallace Wilson Jolly was born in Prahran, Victoria on 14th April 1908. He was the son of Frederick William Jolly, chartered accountant, later a director of G & R Wills & Co Limited, Adelaide, and Beatrice Evelyn Louise, nee Michell (adopted name Wilson). His father was born at Moonta Mines, SA and his mother at Unley Park, SA. Jolly was educated at Scotch College, Adelaide, and gained a bursary and the Hartley Studentship, to study medicine at the University of Adelaide, where he was awarded the Everard Scholarship and the Gosse Medal for Ophthalmology, graduating MB BS in 1930. He also was a member of the University of Adelaide intervarsity baseball team from 1928 to 1930 and furthered his cello playing under Harold Parsons of the Elder Conservatorium. Jolly took his resident year in 1931 at the Adelaide Hospital. While an RMO at the Adelaide Hospital, from 1931 to January 1932, Sir Henry Newland requested that Jolly be his surgical dresser, which he considered an honour. He sailed as ship’s surgeon to England for further medical studies and clinical work mainly at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1932. Jolly was admitted a Member Royal College of Surgeons of England, London, on 28 July 1933; and passed the primary for the FRCS. He gained the Royal College of Physicians of London’s ‘Qualification to Practise Medicine, Surgery, and Midwifery’, on 3 August 1933.  While in England, Jolly married Essie Ida Maude Johnston, on the 2nd June 1932 in St Mary the Virgin Church, Horsham, Sussex. She was the daughter of Professor Thomas Harvey Johnston, a biologist and foundation Professor of Zoology at the University of Adelaide, and Alice, nee Pearce, a former Red Cross worker for Aboriginal welfare, both were born in Sydney. Jolly returned to Adelaide with his wife on the Mongolia in January 1935. Before beginning his general medical practice on Glen Osmond Road, Eastwood, South Australia, Jolly was a locum in country SA, including in Angaston, in the Barossa Valley. He was appointed as an honorary clinical assistant in surgery at the Adelaide Hospital from 1935 and gained his Master of Surgery in 1936 from the University of Adelaide. Jolly then joined the staff of the ACH as an honorary relieving assistant surgeon, in 1938.

Jolly enlisted in the CMF, at Woodside on 8th April 1941. Because of his deafness, he was unable to enlist for service in the 2/AIF.  He named his wife as his next of kin and they were living in Glen Osmond Road, Eastwood, SA at the time. He was posted to 101 AGH, at Woodside, SA on 10th October 1941. Woodside Army Camp expanded during the war to accommodate four infantry battalions. During the war, he was able to continue with his general practice as well as taking on the patients of colleagues who were serving in the military. Jolly was admitted to 101 AGH with pharyngitis on 2nd February 1942 and, discharged on 5th February 1942 and placed on the Reserve of Officers on 30th April 1942.

Throughout the war, Jolly continued as an honorary clinical assistant surgeon, an honorary assistant surgeon at the RAH. He was appointed an honorary surgeon at the ACH in 1946, a position he held until he retired, as Emeritus Surgeon, in 1968.  Jolly was an active clinical teacher at the ACH and served on various management committees. He was appointed to visit Estcourt House Home at Grange (now Tennyson), a home for convalescent and physically disabled children taken over by the ACH in 1955. He was elected co-member of the Post-graduate Committee in Medicine at the University of Adelaide, from 1955 to 1956, and was appointed to a committee to investigate hospital infections in 1959. At one-time he was in charge of the hospital’s burns unit. Jolly was invited to join the salaried staff of the ACH but preferred not to relinquish his much-loved general practice which would have been the consequence of such a change. He was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in June 1958. He wrote scientific papers on Hydatid Disease of the lung and a review of intussusception of the large bowel in children.  Jolly was a long-time member of Kooyonga Golf Club, Lockleys, vice-captain in 1956 and captain over 1957 to 1958. Wallace Wilson Jolly died at home on 25th June 1978 and is buried in St Saviours Anglican Cemetery, Glen Osmond. His wife, Essie, who died in 1996, and three daughters survived him.

Source

Blood, Sweat and Fears III: Medical Practitioners South Australia, who Served in World War 2. 

Swain, Jelly, Verco, Summers. Open Books Howden, Adelaide 2019. 

Uploaded by Annette Summers AO RFD