The New Zealand Section
The New Zealanders arrived at Sidcup in 1918 after transfer of their No.2 Hospital, under the command of Major Henry Pickerill.
Sidcup’s medical staff were organised on national lines, with contingents from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This was due to the participation of many “Dominion” nations (todays Commonwealth) in the conflict.
In 1916 Henry P Pickerill (1879-1956) had been tasked with establishing a “Jaw Unit” in England. The “New Zealand Section” managing facial injuries was set up at Walton-on-Thames. Pickerill was a British born maxillo-facial surgeon trained in Birmingham before emigrating to New Zealand, where he become Director of the Dental School and Hospital in Dunedin. He was initially very reluctant to move his unit to Sidcup. Only the direct intervention of Queen Mary persuaded him otherwise. Nevertheless, he insisted on keeping the New Zealanders distant from the other national teams and their operating suite was built at a distance from the main theatres.
This episode may have revealed Pickerill’s personality. He appears to have been a somewhat authoritarian and individualistic man, who developed a bit of a rivalry with Gillies. He independently came up with his own solutions and procedures for some of the facial injuries managed there.
The New Zealand Section treated 282 patients, but of these 149 were British or South African. Some of the British patients were transferred to the British Section at the end of 1918, when the New Zealand contingent left for home.
The section also left a substantial pictorial and artistic legacy. As with the other units, and probably at Gillies’ direction, a number of watercolours of patients were done. These were mainly the work of Herbert Cole, a native Briton who had emigrated to NZ as a child and was later to paint under the pseudonym of Rix Carlton. A handful were done by the Australian artist Daryl Lindsay. In addition the sculptor Tom Kelsey made an iconic life-size wax model demonstrating a number of flap-based surgical techniques, and which is now displayed in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeon’s (RCS) in London. Additionally, several of his plaster cast moulages of patients survive in the Oral Surgery department of the University of Otago, Dunedin.
Each nation’s contingent removed its records after the war. Some, like those of the Canadians, have disappeared. The New Zealand records were rescued from imminent destruction by Professor A.D.Macalister, Dean of the Dental School in Dunedin. These included most of the watercolours. He donated them to Queen Mary's Hospital “Gillies Archive” in 1989. They have become known as “The Macalister Archive” and with the exception of a single missing file, are now housed in the library of the RCS.
Contributor: Andrew Bamji