Hamilton Hartridge, 7 May 1886 - 13 January 1976

Abstract

Hamilton Hartridge, the eye physiologist, whose interests and life seemed so much concerned with mechanical problems and mechanical crises, was born when two mammoth traction engines, on the way to an exhibition at the Crystal Palace, passed by the house and shook down the ceiling on to his recumbent and pregnant mother, who, losing consciousness, gave birth to her tiny premature boy. The doctor, soon arriving to treat the unconscious mother, was astonished to hear the cry of an infant beneath the blanket. He judged the chance of its survival so small that he assumed the responsibility of performing the first Christian rites and baptized him Hamilton. Fortunately the tiny baby lasted not only all that day, but a further 89 years. Hartridge was born on 7 May 1886 at Stamford Hill, London, the son of Henry Hill Hartridge and Sophy Annie ( Walton). His family is an old one mainly from Kent where, near Hawkhurst, there is Hartridge Manor and Hartridge Mill. Thomas Hartridge was a Justice of the Peace in the thirty-fourth year of King Edward III when there were only eight in the whole County of Kent. Hartridge’s father was a wool importer, but in his spare time he was a good cabinet-maker and a skilled craftsman. ‘A broken bicycle, a new spring for a clock or a broken garden tool was repaired in no time!’ An engineer uncle did much to stimulate Hamilton’s keenness in science, and later his father’s cousin Gustavus Hartridge, ophthalmic surgeon at the Westminster Hospital, contributed to Hamilton’s interest in the eye. His mother was a keen pianist and singer and seemed to have an inexhaustible stock of poems and fairy stories in her memory, with which she entertained her daughter and two sons, Hamilton being the eldest child.