Edward Swarbeck Hall: medical scientist and social reformer in colonial Tasmania

On January 15 , 1933 , Harold Latham of Auckland Road, Greenmeadows , New Zealand, wrote to his cousin, Leventhorpe Hall, in Tasmania: On 25th August , 1933, you will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of your family landing in Hobart. I read in the last Mail you sent those extracts from old letters which gave such a clear picture of conditions as they were in those days and in which you must all have shared for years; all the hardships of pioneer days made worse by the brutal convict system which your grand old fighting father did so much to lessen, even against official authority. I hope a fitting commemoration will be made on the above date of the part the Hall family took in the making of Tasmania as she is today. Some years later, on a more formal not e , W. E. L. H. Crowther in an Archibald Watson Memorial Lecture said: The work of Dr E. S. Hall, MR. C. S., L. S.A., during many years of practice in Van Diemen's Land and as the pioneer epidemiologist of the Australian Colonies (Cumpston 1923) is yet to be fully recognised. A member of the Old Religion and an utterly loyal son of his Church, he became the best known Catholic layman in our Island. Simple and humane he worked primarily for the good of the orphans, the poor and the outcast and exemplified the conception of a christian gentleman. His published work is of great scientific interest and value and, an ardent bibliophile , he pub lished in his latter years a book entitled "Who Translated the Bible" in support of the -early teaching of his Church. An attempt has been made now with this study of Hall's life to fill a long standing gap in Tasmania's history. The task was very rewarding; not just an academic exercise, but a duty owed to Hall's memory and to Tasmania's heritage . introduction. As the story speaks for itself, it needs little introduction. However, there are some features of the work which I would like to explain