Dr Henry Pulteney Wright, MD

From Interim report of the Board of Governors of St. Luke's General Hospital, Ottawa by St. Luke's General Hospital Published 1898 Page 3

Henry Pulteney Wright, M.D., C.M.

By a gift of ten thousand dollars received by the corporation of St. Luke's General Hospital on 10 April 1899, from his widow, Marion Wright, the late Dr. Henry Pulteney Wright is constituted the first Founder of the Hospital.

He was born in Toronto on 11 January 1851, but was educated chiefly at the High School in Quebec, where his boyhood was spent.

Matriculating in Medicine at McGill University, Montreal, in 1867, he graduated in 1871, with honors, obtaining the Faculty's prize that year for the best final examination.

He began practice in Mooretown, Ontario, but in 1872 he removed to Ottawa, where he soon secured a large clientele, and until the day of his death was occupied actively with professional work. His large hearted sympathy as well as his high professional attainments and mature judgment endeared him to all classes of the community.

In 1875 he was elected to the attending staff of the County of Carleton General Protestant Hospital and remained at active work there till he resigned with the entire staff in December 1896, being chairman of the Medical Board at the time.

Being desirous of establishing a modern hospital for the scientific care and treatment of the sick and injured, he threw his whole influence towards attaining that object and St. Luke's General Hospital, founded absolutely on a non-sectarian basis, is the outcome of his work, and in it he had the active support of his colleagues who had resigned with him.

Dr. Wright was elected chairman of the Medical Board on the organization of St. Luke's, a position he held at the time of his death, and by a donation of one thousand dollars to the funds of the institution he became a Life Governor.

Deeply interested in society work of a professional character, he was one of the founders of the Ottawa Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1874, and was its President in 1878 and in 1891.

He was elected President of the Canada Medical Association in 1888, and presided at the meeting in Banff, Northwest Territories, in 1889.

The Bathurst and Rideau Medical Association knew him as an active member, and the Ontario Medical Association likewise. Being a member of the British Medical Association he attended more than one meeting of that distinguished society in the motherland.

On the disruption of the Ottawa Medico-Chirurgical Society he became actively associated in the formation of the Medical Society of Ottawa, and was elected President in 1896 and 1897.

Dr. Wright died on 29 October 1898, soon after retiring, having spent the previous day, as was his wont, in arduous professional work.

Beloved, honored and respected by the entire community, it is a fitting tribute to his memory to find him the first Founder of St, Luke's General Hospital.

From Newspapers: The Ottawa Journal Saturday, 29 October 1898 Page 7 Sudden death of Dr. H. P. Wright: Heart failure removes one of Ottawa's leading physicians

He had dined at Rideau Hall, then attended a medical dinner and died shortly after returning home.

Dr. Henry Pulteney Wright died suddenly this morning Saturday, 29 October 1898 at his residence 196 Elgin street. Syncope, or failure of the heart, was the cause of his demise.

Dr Wright was in the best of spirits yesterday, and apparently in good health. None of his friends thought that today he would be lifeless clay. At the invitation of Lord Aberdeen, he in company with Mrs. Wright had dined at Rideau Hall. He had previously promised Dr. Powell to be present at the latter's residence at a supper tendered to the Medical Society. Having been at Rideau Hall, Dr. Wright about midnight arrived at Dr. Powell's and took his place at table near Dr. Dewar. He remarked to Dr. Dewar that he had a pain in his shoulders and thought he had better ...

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His manner of work.

Dr. Wright's practice was to work and do nothing but work during eleven months of the year. He took no exercise or recreation of any kind. He was out in the open air a good deal, while driving around to his patients, but apart from that he took no physical care of himself except during a month in summer, which he usually spent at Murray Bay. In the other eleven months he worked fourteen or sixteen hours a day most of the time. He refused no one. He had the largest practice in the city among the well-to-do classes, and he had a big practice among the poor to hundreds of whom he charged nothing. This professional over-work was accompanied by a good deal of outside work, especially during the last three years in the founding and completion of St. Luke's Hospital.

All Dr. Wright's friends noted that towards each spring he looked dragged and sallow, and spoke eagerly of getting down to Murray Bay again. A month there usually set him up well, and then he would commence another eleven months' grind with over-work by day, with sleep' broken constantly by calls, and with irregular and hasty meals. ...

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High professional attainments - his associations and family.

Dr. Wright was born in Toronto in 1851, a son of Mr. W. R. Wright, formerly of the civil service. He received part of his education in Quebec, and graduated in medicine from McGill University, Montreal, in 1871, taking honors. In 1872 he came to Ottawa...

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In 1887 the late Dr. Wright married Marion Grahame, daughter of the late Mr. James Grahame, of Vaughan, Ontario.

Tributes to his character: What fellow practitioners say about the late Dr. Wright.

Dr. R. W. Powell, of Cooper street, has been a life-long friend of the deceased. Speaking this morning of the late Dr. Wright, Dr. Powell said that in Dr. Wright's death the medical profession in Ottawa had lost one of its best friends and brightest ornament. "Everybody will miss him," continued Dr. Powell, "and I cannot say enough of his good qualities. He had a wide sphere of usefulness, and throughout Central Canada his loss will be felt. He possessed many friends, and everyone knew him. He was peculiarly constituted as a medical man. He was not easily ruined, had an even temperament and could do with little sleep."

From Somewhere in France: The WWI letters of Lieutenant Parr Hooper 2. Oxford: 3 October 1917 - 2 November 1917

I had a very short and pleasant visit with the Wright family. We sat in the study around a coal fire, Miss Wright, her sister a few years younger, her sister-in-law and her mother, and bickered about the school, the war and generalities. They are very nice people. The father is evidently dead. Their home was in Ottawa. One (19 years) brother was killed in the Canadian Infantry, one brother is still at the front in artillery and one is a doctor returned from the front and now working in a hospital in England. Then there is a nephew a captain in the flying corps with one leg shot off when he landed behind the lines in Boche-land, but got away again. The two sisters here are working in a hospital and another sister is a manager in a hospital in France.

The Wright family was the family of Dr. Henry Pulteney Wright (1851–1898), a classmate of William Osler at McGill and founder of St. Luke’s Hospital in Ottawa. Presumably to be near her children, most or all of whom were in England or at the front, his widow, Marion Grahame Wright, moved to Oxford, not far from the Oslers, in 1915

There were four Wright daughters. The oldest, Phoebe Marion Wright, was probably the one Parr refers to as “manager of a hospital in France.” The second daughter, Ottilie Frances Wright, who was Parr’s age, had in 1911 married one of Osler’s students, Campbell Palmer Howard. The third daughter, Jean Grahame Wright, was born in 1894, and the youngest, Marion Gertrude Wright, in 1896. Parr never uses the first name of his “Miss Wright,” but she was presumably Jean.

The nineteen year old brother (and youngest child) was William Richard Wright, a student at the University of Toronto before he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force early in 1917; he died 13 May 1917. Palmer Howard Wright, the third child and second son, was a civil servant when he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 22 January 1915, shortly after his marriage to Hilda Alberta Sherwood. The Wrights’ oldest child, Henry (“Harry”) Pulteney Grahame Wright, was already a physician when he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 14 November 1914, shortly before his marriage to Norah Hume Blake. A Major, he served in the No 6 Field Ambulance battalion of the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

The “nephew a captain in the flying corps” may have been Captain Arthur Banks Wright, a pilot in No. 23 Squadron who was wounded in the foot on 17 June 1917.

From Somewhere in France: WWI Letter of Lieutenant Parr Hooper Endnotes

94. For Henry Pulteney Wright’s birth and death dates and his involvement in St. Luke’s, see St. Luke’s General Hospital, Charter of incorporation and by-laws of St. Luke’s General Hospital, Ottawa, Page 7, where there is a biography of Wright. For his relationship to Osler, see McGill University Library, The William Osler Photo Collection, in particular the description attached to the photo captioned “William Osler, Nona Gwyn, M. Collis Sands, and Ottilie Wright in the Garden at 13 Norham Gardens, 1910.” In the (comparatively) “small world” department: H. P. Wright had been physician to the family of Alexander Jamieson Russell (1807–1887), great grandfather of James Russell McQueen, who married Parr’s sister Margaret.

98. The names and birthdates of the seven children of Henry Pulteney and Marion Grahame Wright are available at Ancestry.com, 1901 Census of Canada, records for Attil Wright [sic], etc.

From Dictionary of Canadian Biography Page 193 - Google Books

In 1897, several of Ottawa's leading citizens, including Dr Henry Pulteney Wright and lumber magnates John Rudolphus Booth and John Manuel, had founded St. Luke's Hospital (later incorporated into Ottawa Civic). Although financially sustained by the Presbyterian Church, it received the full support of Ottawa's elite. Sir Wilfred Laurier laid its cornerstone and Governor General Lord Aberdeen [Hamilton-Gordon] and Lady Aberdeen [Marjoribanks] led the opening ceremonies in July 1898.

Annie Amelia Chesley was named Lady Superintendent at St. Luke's Hospital.

From findagrave: Henry Pulteney Wright (1851-1898)

• Name: Henry Pulteney Wright
• Born: Saturday, 11 January 1851
• Died: Saturday, 29 October 1898 (aged 47)
• Buried: [Beechwood Cemetery, 280 Beechwood Avenue, Vanier, Ottawa, Ontario, ON K1L 8A6, Canada 45.44626, -75.66605]
• Plot: Section 48
• Inscription:
  • Henry Pulteney Wright, born Saturday, 11 January 1851, died Saturday, 29 October 1898
  • Marion Wright (née Grahame), wife of Henry Pulteney Wright, born Tuesday, 11 February 1862, died Monday, 3 September 1945