Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Herbert Russell Nolan was one of thirteen children of the Rev James Adam Nolan [1837-1904] and his wife Sara Susan Holme [1843-1927] was born at Singleton in 1866. The Christian name of Russell, by which he elected to be known, came from his mother’s family – she was a leader in the Women’s Movements and well known in the Women’s Christian Temperence Union.

His father was a Wesleyan Methodist minister who served the church across fourteen parishes in New South Wales and Queensland for forty years. It was the practice of the church to give its itinerant preachers a change of circuit every three years, so by the time he was 12 years of age Russell had also lived in Newcastle, Maitland, Sydney, and Orange.

In 1880 the family returned to Sydney and Russell was enrolled at Newington College at Stanmore where he gained a scholarship. From Newington in 1885 he proceeded to the University of Sydney where he entered the Faculty of Medicine. He graduated in 1890 and with the family living in Ipswich, he moved to Queensland to work at the Toowoomba Hospital. At the end of 1892 he entered private practice in Toowoomba as a Physician and Surgeon.

He had a talent for surgery and was well known for performing the first deliberate appendectomy in Australia in March 1893 on a 30-year-old woman, who survived the operation.

Dr Nolan was still practicing in Toowoomba when the Boer War broke out.  After volunteering in late 1899, Captain Nolan left for the front as Medical Officer with the 2nd contingent of Queensland Mounted Infantry in January 1900. He was part of operations in the Orange Free State as well as actions at Poplar Grove, Driefontein and Vet River until incapacitated in May 1900 by typhoid fever, from which his health was permanently impaired.

Proceeding to England for convalescence, he subsequently entered upon a special course of study at various clinics in Europe, and in 1902 returned to Sydney, setting up in Macquarie Street as an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Dr Nolan again established himself as a fine practitioner, winning a wide reputation for his skill. He was appointed lecturer on diseases of the ear, nose, and throat in the Medical Faculty of the University of Sydney and for some time was medical referee in connection with the conference of the Methodist Church, founding a bursary for the theological students of the church in memory, of his late father.

He married Emma Florence Kelynack, the oldest daughter of the late Rev. Dr. W. H. Kelynack, in Sydney in 1896. They had three sons, the eldest of whom, Lieutenant Morvan Kelynack Nolan, was killed in action during World War 1 in 1918.

In 1914, as one of the original Directors of the Barrenjoey Land Company, he bought almost 180 acres of land at the Careel Bay end of Whale Beach on Pittwater. However, during 1914 his health deteriorated further and by the end of the year he had permanently retired from medical practice. His death occurred at Potts Point, early on the morning of Wednesday 4 February 1915 at the age of just 48 years.

His fine character and consistent generosity gained him many friends and in his own profession his death was felt as a great loss. He was survived by his wife and three sons.

Reference:http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15568214