Part III Murder
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
After the War
Bill returned to Hamilton in the late winter of 1919 to find that his friends from the 5th Field Ambulance were also returning to their practices and re-establishing themselves in civilian life. The “War to end all Wars” was over but not forgotten. The 5th Field Ambulance veterans got together regularly. In 1926, Bill presented on his experiences in Macedonia at a meeting at the Walker House Hotel in Toronto.
Even after the 1939-45 conflict, they never referred to it as “World War I”, or “The Great War” or even “The” war. It was just the war. Bill was a Captain during the last years of the war. As a Major, and later a Lieut. Colonel, he was Commanding Officer of the Hamilton Medical Company (5th Field Ambulance) in the early 1930s. As a young child, I can remember going down with my mother to visit him at the summer camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Father continued in the Militia until 1945. The reserve unit still functions as the ‘23rd Medical Company.’ In 2003 they were able to change their name to the ‘23rd Field Ambulance,’ honouring the old name.
Every November the 11th, Bill would be on parade. Even after he no longer could get into his uniform, he still wore his medals. His closest friend was Daniel Kappele, who had been C.O. of the 5th Field Ambulance in France at the end of the war. There was Dick Farmer (the son of the World War I Colonel), Crossen Clarke, Leeming Carr, among the others. Another friend, Jimmy McLay, brought back a war bride from Belgium and set up practice in Grimsby. He suicided in the late 1920s and Bill and Helene kept in touch with his widow, who moved to Montreal in the mid-1930s.
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch!!
Bill returned from the war to find that his father John William was very depressed. He had had four boys, which would be every homesteader’s dream. Yet at this point, his oldest (Bill) had embarked on a city career; the next (George) was killed in a barn-raising in 1914; the third (Albert) suffered from tuberculosis and was not well enough to do much work and the youngest (John Eric), the farmer, had a birth injury and John knew that he could not run the farm by himself. To make matters worse, there was a farm depression in the 1920s and the price of crops was very low. It must have seemed like a horrible nightmare. He rented the second 100 acre lot to another farmer and he and Eric tried to keep the first lot going. He soldiered on until he was over 70, but then was persuaded that he must sell the farm and retire. With Bill’s help, the family was moved from the farm on the 10th line, Tecumseth Township into the town. It included John and Bel, her sister Christine and sons Albert and John Eric. In 1928, Albert was readmitted to the Hamilton Sanitarium, where he had surgery to collapse his lung.
By this time, Bill was settled into his career. There were many trips from Hamilton to Beeton. John died in 1929. Bel died in 1931. Christine and Eric were left in the house.
Social and Family Life
Bill was also very involved in the social whirl in Hamilton. He was very involved with his doctor friends, most of whom had been overseas with him in the First World War. But his concern about the disfigurement of the smallpox scars from Egypt was a serious impediment. Later they had faded to a pebbly look, something like the surface of the moon – only noticeable if looked at closely. But in the early ’20s they were still red and splotchy and made him look like had some strange tropical disease. He recalled his shyness when he first met Helena Trenaman, his future wife. Helena’s remark later was: “I loved him. I wasn’t concerned about his complexion.” They were married in Hamilton at All Saints Anglican Church in 1923.1
The Trenamans
Helena came from a prominent Hamilton family. Her father had a prosperous business in household cleaning and maintenance supplies. Her lineage went back to the Norman Conquest. The name Trenaman was derived from “Twentyman”.2 Ancestors had come over to New Brunswick early in the 19th century. Robert Trenaman was a Midshipman in the Royal Navy. When his ship docked in Saint John New Brunswick he jumped ship and stayed with a family in Saint John.3 The story goes that when the Royal Marines came looking, he was dressed as an old lady sitting in a chair and was not discovered. There was another Robert in the family, either son or nephew, who lost his first wife and children in a boating accident on the St. John River. He married again in 1841, to Elizabeth Jane Dykeman, and had six children, three born in New Brunswick, and three after the family had moved to Upper Canada (Canada West) in about 1849.
They moved around a bit, but when Helena’s father, Joshua Dykeman Trenaman, was born in 1856, they were living in Blenheim Township near the village of Drumbo. Joshua’s mother, Elizabeth, must have died when he was a child, because Helena said that he barely remembered her. Robert married again to someone called “Julia A”. Joshua and his siblings could not abide Julia, and would not even go to visit their father. Robert apparently became bitter, and cut his children off without a cent of inheritance. He and Julia moved to the United States. He died in 1885 – the same year Bill Deadman was born – and is buried in Marlatt Michigan.
Joshua moved to Hamilton, and in 1884, married Ida Jane Pingle. The Pingle (Pingel) family had settled near Markham in the so-called Berczy Settlement. In the early part of the 19th century, William Berczy led a group of German settlers from Schlesweig-Holstein to settle in Genesee County, New York. Things were not going well for them in upstate New York, and Berczy read a notice that land was opening up in Upper Canada near the town of York (now Toronto). He obtained a tract of land in Markham Township, northeast of York which became known as the Berczy Settlement.
The Berczy cemetery is on the east side of Kennedy Road, south of Major Mackenzie Drive and just north of there, in a farmer’s field near the road, is the Pingle burial plot with a white stone monument. Time had weathered the names so that they were barely decipherable, but the name Pingle could still be made out when we last visited it before Helene’s death in 1979. In the book “William Berczy Co-Founder of Toronto”, our family name is spelled the German way “Pingel”.i
Ida Jane and Joshua had six children, including two sets of twins, but only three survived childhood. Harry Clifford was the oldest, born 31st of January, 1886, but the family never talked about him; he was considered a “black sheep” by all the family. Next born were twin boys who died in their beds at an early age from what was thought to be coal gas poisoning.4 Madeline Jane was next, born 22nd of January, 1889, and she had a twin who died at birth. Like almost everyone in the family, she married late to Walter Cecil Fletcher, known in the family as ‘Ces’. They had a daughter Jane. Helena Pingle was born 13th of August, 1899 when her mother was about 39. Known as Helene, she always considered herself a menopause baby. Because the health and medical standards of the day were much lower than modern standards, this would not have been all that unusual at that time.
Joshua built up a business, Hamilton Domestic Specialties making and selling cleaning powders and stove polish.5 The business was doing well enough that in 1899 he built a big house on Blake Street, near Sherman Avenue, in what was opening up as a new better district in the east end of Hamilton. He had a glass panel cut with the Trenaman coat of arms and put it into a small window in the front hall of the house. The escutcheon shows a battle axe and dagger crossed on a field. As a child, I remember my mother explaining it to me. I envisioned knights in full armour, jousting matches and great banners flapping in the breeze. The house still stands, little changed from its glory days. When I remember it, it had already been converted into a duplex. My grandmother lived on the ground floor and Aunt Madeline, Uncle Cecil and my cousin Jane lived on the upper floors.
Mother’s Recollections
Helene loved to reminisce about her early years. Apparently her mother considered her a sickly child, thin, and prone to every affliction that came along. She must have gotten over this later, because I always remembered her as robust, energetic and healthy. She remembered that one year for Christmas she got a new sled. She tried it out on a nearby hill. The sled suddenly stopped and as she fell off, she ripped all the buttons off her new coat when they got jammed between the slats. She told me that she was afraid to go home, so she was in trouble both for ruining her coat andbeing late for supper.
The first automobile she saw on a Hamilton street belonged to a friend of her father. It was literally a “horseless carriage”. It was open, with a curved leather dashboard in front, large spoked wheels, and a tiller to steer. There was no radiator. The engine was air-cooled and was under the seat with a chain drive to the rear wheels. One day the engine ran out of oil, overheated and caught fire. Pedestrians shouted and waved at the driver, pointing to the flames under the seat, but he ignored this and drove serenely on, until the engine seized. At this point he was feeling the heat, and he jumped off. The whole car burned. He later complained: “they told me to put gasoline in it, but didn’t say anything about oil.”
Helene was sent to “Kingsthorpe”, a small private girls’ school near her home. She had several friends from school with whom she kept in touch all her life.6 The school was organized something like the English public schools and had six forms in the junior school and six in the senior school. She loved languages, but also did well in mathematics. Science was not taught to girls, so it was not offered at Kingsthorpe7.
The First World War broke out on almost the day of her 15th birthday. She remembers that her older brother Harry went overseas and spent time in England. His wife, Jessica (née Cuttriss) had two very small children, my cousins George and Harry Junior. The “Great War” was seen as a heroic venture in 1914 – most people thought it would not last more than a year – and so my mother’s sister, Madeline and Jessie went to England to be with older brother Harry. I think that Jessie took George, but not Harry Junior. My mother looked after him for a while. After less than a year, as the war dragged on, they decided to come home. Cousin Mary, the youngest, was born in December 1917. She died in 2018 at the age of 101.
Helene got her matriculation at Kingsthorpe, in the last year of ‘the war to end all wars’. That was a very good education for a woman in those days. People were returning from the war and returning to civilian life. It was expected that she would stay home and help with the family until she got married. But she loved music and had her heart set on a career. From 1918 to 1922, she studied violin and voice at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. She reminisced about her good times in the big city. Toronto at that time was 522,000 people whereas Hamilton was just 114,000 in the 1921 census. She recalls the theatres and the music scene in the immediate post-war period. It really did seem like the war to end all wars.
By the war’s end in November, 1918, Joshua was ready to retire and wanted to turn the family business over to his son Harry, who had survived the war somewhat better than most. The parents then took an extended vacation to Jamaica in 1919. Madeline must have gone with them because she talked about this later, especially about her stay at the old Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston.8
When Uncle Harry took over Hamilton Domestic Specialties he had ambitious plans for it. It had provided a comfortable income for the family and during the war years had received several large government contracts. Harry decided to expand. He negotiated a large loan from the bank and began making plans to open branches in several neighbouring cities. At this point Joshua and the family returned from Jamaica. Grandfather was furious, largely because he had been proud of doing it on his own, never running up debts and having a solid if somewhat conservative image in the community. He ordered Harry out of the business, cancelled the bank loans and the other plans. He spent most of the rest of his life paying off the resulting debts.
Harry’s reaction was not recorded. By this time he had three children, Harry junior, George and Mary and he moved his whole family to Burlington. There was little contact between Harry and the rest of the family until the mid-1920s when he apparently left his wife and family and took off with his secretary for parts unknown. Jessie (ne. Cuttriss) went back to her family in Toronto, taking the youngest, Mary with her. George and Harry Jr. came to stay with Aunt Madeline and with Bill and Helene. This was such a shame to the family that it was not even mentioned until many years later when he pestered his mother about the “black sheep”. Then she finally told him a little bit. By this time, he was an adult. He recalls:
“I was told, in the euphemistic terms of those days that Jessie had ‘died of a broken heart’. Somehow that made more sense to me than the Greek and Latin terms doctors use nowadays. But because I didn’t know all this as a child, I had trouble figuring out how “Frankie” (Frances) and Vic (Victor) Mueller were cousins of mine. In fact, Frankie was Jessie’s sister, and this family had helped out with the children, my cousins, during the time of crisis. She had another sister, Nina. “I was told, in the euphemistic terms of those days that Jessie had ‘died of a broken heart’. Somehow that made more sense to me than the Greek and Latin terms doctors use nowadays.
But because I didn’t know all this as a child, I had trouble figuring out how “Frankie” (Frances) and Vic (Victor) Mueller were cousins of mine. In fact, Frankie was Jessie’s sister, and this family had helped out with the children, my cousins, during the time of crisis. She had another sister, Nina. Many years later, I worked with a social worker, Mr. Jim Carson, who was related to us on the Mueller side. “As a child, I was not too aware of things which did not directly impinge on me, and my mother took some pains to protect me from much of this.
Afterwards, I thought it was a real disadvantage, because, after I got married at the age of 27, she told my wife, Fran the whole story about the family “Black Sheep” and also incidentally, about the suicide of a wartime doctor friend of my father. I had never been told the details of either of these. I confronted mother on this and she said that when I was young, she felt that I shouldn’t know, and when I was older, she didn’t tell me because she thought that I already did know. It was very puzzling for a child. I always wondered why my cousins did not have a mother or father, and were living with us. But I knew better than to ask. These things were simply not mentioned in nice families.
The Roaring Twenties
The 1920s was an exciting time to be young. It was the days of the flappers, cloche hats, running boards and rumble seats, and a heady optimism about the future. In the arts and architecture, the “Art Nouveau” movement was giving way to what later was known as “Art Deco”. In Germany, the Bauhaus was producing furniture and household interior designs which were revolutionizing the whole concept of modern life. George Bernard Shaw was replacing Oscar Wilde, who had died a decade earlier, as the “infant terrible” of the literary world.
In music, the musical comedy had evolved from the operettas of Offenbach, and Gilbert and Sullivan to the more sophisticated, if equally frothy, musical comedies of Franz Lehar. And new names were appearing, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern. In the automotive world, the Model T Ford had put North America on wheels, but now everyone was looking at the streamlined Pierce Arrow, the Auburn with sleeve valve engine and the Stutz Bearcat, the first real American sports car.
The wireless, now called “Radio,” was evolving from the primitive crystal set, into something which the whole family could listen to. And moving pictures had evolved from the peep shows and nickelodeons of the turn of the century to the comedy of the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin and the epic drama of “All Quiet on the Western Front”. In industry the production line, pioneered by Henry Ford, was producing goods in every larger quantities at ever lower prices, so that many believed that Nirvana had arrived.
Yet this had an ugly underside which did not escape notice. The gulf between the rich and poor was widening. Industries were booming and anyone could make money in the stock market, but, as portrayed by Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times” working conditions in industry were poor, often dehumanizing. High living always on the edge of disaster, had become a way of life for many, as described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby”. But everyone was having such a good time that they did not reflect on these things until the inevitable stock market crash came in October 1929.
Canada also instituted Prohibition at the same time as the United States, but it only lasted until the mid-twenties in Canada – fully a decade before it ended in the U.S.9 This was a great opportunity for the bootleggers and rum-runners. Border towns were especially vulnerable and many cities on the Great Lakes, especially Hamilton, became centres for underworld activity. This invariably increased the crime rate and Bill found himself very much involved in inquests and murder trials. As well, there was a burst of medical research activity around the World. Knowledge was advancing and the City Laboratory was an excellent venue to participate in this research. Bill took full advantage of this. He published extensively and the “Lab” became a training centre for pathologists and laboratory technicians. The “Roaring Twenties” earned their reputation.
Helene’s family spent summers in Port Dover, a small summer resort town on Lake Erie, about 40 miles south of Hamilton. Her parents had a cottage on 2nd Avenue, two blocks from the lake. The young people were at parties or over at the resort hotels for dances. It seemed they never stopped. Friends from Buffalo, the Lindsay’s, spent their summers there. Gladys Lindsay was about Helene’s age, and she married a Buffalo lawyer Nathaniel Norton, about the same time as Helene married my father.
She recalled dances at the Orchard Beach Hotel with the inevitable ‘Mickey’ of rye being passed around under the table so the chaperones wouldn’t see (it was Prohibition time in the US and Canada) and talking with the other girls about the boys who might ask them to dance. When she first invited my father to the family cottage, it was with some excitement that she took him to one of these dances. I remember my mother’s voice grew soft and wistful, and sometimes she would pause for a moment before she continued.
Meeting My Father
Helene recalled a party in Hamilton where she met a young pathologist, Bill Deadman, who had just come to the Hamilton General Hospital. She recalls thinking to herself: “With my luck, I will end up marrying a man with a last name like that.” He was shy and seemed self-conscious about the pock marks on his face which he said were from smallpox he caught in the war. Sometime later, he told her he had tickets to a new musical which was playing in Toronto. It was called “Chu-Chin-Chow” (Oscar Ashe and Arthur Anderson). It was the latest hit from New York and London. It was in the traditions of Franz Lehar and Johann Straus Jr.
She was very keen to see it, but because he was so vague in his approach, she wasn’t sure if he had really asked her to go. She was asked to go out on the same evening by another man of her acquaintance, and in a bit of a huff about the vagueness of the prior invitation, when he called to confirm, she told him she was “busy”. When she realized afterwards how heart-broken he was, she felt terrible and broke another date to accept his invitation the next time – and the next time.
Before long it was time to take him home to meet her parents. She was embarrassed to discover that, because her older sister, Madeline was unmarried, her parents were trying to push the young doctor towards her sister. He didn’t call for a while after that and she became very concerned that he would lose interest in her, but eventually he did. It took a bit of persuasion for her parents to accept that she should be married before her sister. Finally they did accept it, and a large wedding was planned for October 16th, 1923 at All Saints Church in Hamilton. The reception was held at their home at 99 Blake Street.
Helene had many friends who had parties in both Hamilton and Toronto. Bill knew most of the physicians in Hamilton many of whom had been in the 5th Field Ambulance during the war. Helene remembers that the first paved highway appeared in Ontario between Toronto and Hamilton, the Toronto-Hamilton Highway, which soon became Highway Number 2.10 She had first driven her father’s car in 1918, and considered herself a good driver at that time. There were no formal driving tests or driver’s licenses until almost ten years later.
In 1926, Helene had a trip to England. She went by herself because Bill was busy and couldn’t take the time for a holiday. (This was his mantra throughout his life.) She went on the Canadian Pacific Lines and her old album of pictures showed scenes of London, ancient monasteries in Yorkshire and lots of other places. Towards the back of the album were pictures of a side-trip to France where she saw the railway coach in which the Armistice ending the “Great War” had been signed. In her pile of books were guide books to London and Ripon which date from that trip. Helene made a scrapbook that is still in the family collection.
Family Life – Marriage
After their marriage, they settled into life at 91 Delaware Avenue. The ‘Lab’ was very busy and several new staff were hired. During the 1920s, it expanded into the largest, non-teaching pathology department in Canada. Father was in Toronto to meetings on a regular basis, there were parties and receptions. In the summers, the Trenaman cottage at Port Dover was a busy social whirl. Bill and Helene were learning to play golf, which was all the rage in those days. They joined the Hamilton Golf and Country Club located in Ancaster, a small town west of Hamilton. Bill stated that he had worked hard to get to where he was and he wanted to enjoy the social events and his involvement in a great many things.
As a result, they postponed having children for a few years, and when they did decide that it was time, Helena had several miscarriages. When a son was born, father was pleased as punch, and would come home early from the lab to see him. In the box of old pictures were some shots of son John in a carriage beside the house. There was snow in the ground and he was probably only a month or two old. There was nothing else on that film so it appears that Bill took the whole roll of film at one time. This seemed a terrible extravagance for those days but indicated how he felt.
The Motor Car
It is hard for young people to appreciate the difficulties of driving in the early years of the century. There were very few hard surface roads, and most of the others turned into quagmires after a day’s rain. Cars were very unreliable, and so were the tires. Father considered that he was doing very well to travel 50 miles without a puncture. When the Toronto-Hamilton highway was paved in the early 20s, there was one lane of concrete with gravel on both sides. If you met another car, you passed each other with the left wheels on the concrete and the right wheels on the gravel. If it was raining, and the gravel turned to mud, this could easily drag the car down into the ditch.
Helene recalled going to Port Dover to start the season in Bill’s Model “T” about a year before they were married. They were all elegantly dressed for the occasion, her mother with a large flowered hat, sat up on the back seat with her two Pomeranian dogs, and two budgies in a large cage, as well as suitcases, hat boxes and whatnot. Helene had a large hat and a duster, and sat beside Bill who was driving. He was wearing his new blue serge three piece suit, with white shirt, starched collar and tie.
Punctures were a problem in those days, because changing a tire on the side of the road was very difficult. It often meant taking the tire off the rim and putting a patch on the inner tube, then putting the whole thing together again. The Model “T” had demountable rims which made the whole thing somewhat easier, and Bill had two spares on the back, which ordinarily would be enough to get to Port Dover and back. However, between Hagersville and Jarvis, he had had to use the second spare so if there was another puncture, he would be patching inner tubes on the side of the road.
After they went through Jarvis, the oiled gravel surface gave way to clay, and as there had been recent rain, they were churning through wet clay which engulfed the tires most of the way. They got stuck about 3 miles south of Jarvis, and the more they spun the wheels, the deeper the car dug itself in. Finally, Bill got out, and asked Helene to drive while he pushed. When the car lurched forward, he fell on his knees in the mud and the spinning wheels threw even more mud on him. Helene said she was going to stop, but he kept shouting: “Keep her going. Don’t stop! Keep her going ‘till you’re out of the mud.” She recalls that the suit was ruined. Even with the new “Dry Cleaning” process, it never regained its shape. And Helene said that throughout the whole event, her mother sat, like Queen Victoria, on the back seat and never said a word.
She remembered driving back from Toronto on the Dundas Highway (Number 5 Highway) after they had been to a party in Toronto. In those days, they still had the Model “T” which Bill had purchased in 1919 when he returned from the war. It had a high windshield with a section which could be opened, and planetary gears controlled by pedals on the floor. Sometimes they did not get home until 2 AM, but he still had to be into the “Lab” early in the morning.
Cars
It seemed everyone was on wheels in the roaring ‘20s. The Model T was the first to be popular but soon others entered the market. The Model T was followed by the Model A, a roadster with a collapsible top and a rumble seat. Packard had a Twin 6 roadster. Willys Overland had the Whippet. Nash, Hudson, Essex and Studebaker had roadsters and touring cars. In England, Rolls Royce developed luxury cars that were preferred by Royalty.
Dodge Brothers brought out a line of trucks and later a car. Ford had truck models that were used in the First World War. The roads of the day were gradually improving with gravel replacing mud and concrete paving on the busiest ones. In the U.S.A. touring became popular with the development of better roads. The Lincoln Highway, built in 1912-13, ran from New York City to San Francisco and by the late ‘20s it was paved all the way. When Bill replaced his Model T, he bought a large Essex sedan that appears in several pictures taken in that era.
Hamilton City Pathologist
For Bill in 1919, it was back to his position of City Pathologist and Director of Laboratories. He continued in this role until his retirement at the age of 71 in 1956 – a total of 37 years, not counting his 4 years of military service. The immediate post-war years were marked by the Spanish Influenza Pandemic that lasted until 1922 and killed millions of people worldwide. There were many deaths in Hamilton. Businesses shut down and public meetings were banned. Even church attendance was restricted. It was a busy time for the City Laboratories and the pathology service. He never did return to Johns Hopkins to complete is training in pathology. He always said that the training he had received in Egypt and Macedonia working with the best British medical people was probably better than he would have received there.
Diabetes and Insulin
Langerhans described the islets in the pancreas that produced Insulin in 1869. Insulin controls the metabolism of sugar in the body – if it is not metabolized it causes diabetes that in severe cases was usually fatal. Several researchers were trying to extract and purify the hormone and by 1921 several were getting close. Bill’s friend, Frederick Banting11 was working on this at the University of Toronto. The Professor of Physiology, J.J.R. MacLeod offered them laboratory space. Banting worked with a medical student, Charles Best and a biochemist James Collip and in 1922 had produced the hormone that was first tried on a human subject in January 1922. After it was further purified it eliminated the symptoms and the patient recovered.
Quantity production became a problem. Private pharmaceutical firms could dominate the research, take out patents and Banting and Best would lose control. A compromise solution was found. The patent was assigned to the U. of T and steps were taken to set up the Connaught Labs to produce it at low cost. It was also agreed that any further research by anyone else had to be freely shared with the U. of T.
In 1923, Banting and MacLeod were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. The prize was shared with Best and Collip. Other researchers who had done much
research on the topic before Banting started were incensed and there was controversy and bad feeling in the research community for years afterwards. Bill was thrilled and complemented his friend, inviting him to make presentations in Hamilton. This he did several years later.
Back at the Lab
The laboratory service in Hamilton covered hospital pathology, clinical laboratory services and public health lab services.ii Bill described this as the first Canadian lab service to serve both hospital and public health needs. The Director ranked as a city department head such as the hospital superintendent and the Medical Officer of Health. It was organized in 1910 and had a succession of physicians before Bill Deadman accepted the post in 1914. In 1922 they moved into new quarters on the second floor of the Victoria Avenue Building the staff totalled eight in all. They were very busy with clinics for diphtheria, doing throat cultures and giving immunizations to children. Cholera was also a big killer. Bill encountered it shortly after he started as an interne at the Hamilton General. By the mid-thirties diphtheria and cholera had virtually disappeared in Hamilton.iii
Marion Hutchison
Bill realized that as the work piled up he needed secretarial assistance. He got an increase in the budget and hired Marion Hutchison who organized the work and was of invaluable assistance to the lab and the pathology service. She was an excellent typist and also took dictation so Bill was able to eliminate numerous hand-written reports. In the days before photo copiers she retyped reports. Bill asked her to use carbon paper for all his correspondence and other important documents. This proved invaluable in doing the research for this book because we have both sides of some pretty important conversations.12
Bill continued to develop the lab with his chief technician Frank Elliot. They established a training program for medical technology that attracted students from all over Ontario. This work continued through the 1930s and ‘40s. He and Frank were instrumental in setting up the first professional organization for training standards in Canada. The Canadian Society for Laboratory Technology, more recently known as the Canadian Society for Medical Laboratory Science kept their offices in Hamilton even though much recent development was shifted to centres with university medical programs. In 2016 the CSMLS announced that it was divesting itself of responsibility for accrediting training programs. It still has offices at 33 Wellington St. North in Hamilton. The Society has honoured Frank as a founder of the CSMLS. This will be discussed in later chapters.
He was a regional expert in forensic pathology and established the Forensic Pathology Program at the Hamilton General Hospital – probably the first formal program in Canada. He continued to lecture and train interns and had teaching appointments at both the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario, the first non-teaching hospital in Canada to do this. The first interne was Dr. R. C. Riley from Calgary but over the years he had some 75 internes and residents working with him. When he retired in 1956, a group of former internes took him out to dinner and presented him with a fine gold watch which was one of his treasured keepsakes.13
Bill was close to all the Regional Coroners in the area from Niagara to Waterloo and was involved in inquests and several criminal trials. He got to know the Provincial Coroner in Toronto Dr. Smirlie Lawson. This was to stand him in good stead when he retired in 1956 because he was appointed as a consultant to the Provincial Forensic Pathology Laboratory known locally as the ‘Crime Lab’ and he continued there until his death in 1965.
Bill was elected President of the Hamilton Academy of Medicine for the years 1928-29. He was host to the Convention of the Ontario Medical Association in Hamilton in May, 1929. He recalled that he had a difficult year over the issue of fee-splitting. This was a very bitter controversy that still arises in medicine from time to time.
By this time the Lab was offering a wide range of services including an allergy lab and a blood transfusion service. Bill had done 59 post-mortem examinations (autopsies) in 1919 and the number continued to increase in subsequent years. His output continued into the 1930s and ‘40s. He appeared at inquests for many of these and discovered many medical issues that had not been previously studied. In 1926 he presented a case of Phenacetin poisoning resulting in death. The Hamilton Spectator reported on a lecture on Bacteriology given in 1926 where he discussed his experience in the First World War. He had concluded that it must be a virus but little was known of them at that time.
Research and Public Speaking
Bill became very active in research on many public health issues. He spoke to local groups about health issues at every occasion. He spoke on other issues including the pasteurization of milk, childhood tuberculosis, cancer and many other topics. With the help of his secretary, many of these papers were published as monographs. This work continued throughout his whole time in the lab. He did not retire from HGH until 1956.
The Great Depression
The Great Depression on October 29th, 1929 was not unexpected as there had been many indicators of trouble in the stock markets for a long time. Everyone was interested and as stock prices went up, more and more people bought shares. Many less-affluent people bought them on margin, that is, they had a loan in which the stock was their security. In 1929 margins could be as low as 10%.
During the immediate aftermath, the Dow Jones Industrial average dropped from 381 to 198 in the next two months but continued down for several years, reaching 41 in 1932. This ushered in a period of deflation that meant that the whole economy stalled. This had an effect on everybody but the people at the bottom of the income ladder suffered the most. For many images of soup kitchens and people living on the streets were the most striking. Many took off for parts unknown.
This was quite common during the Great Depression. Men were traveling the length and breadth of the country looking for work, and seldom finding it. They traveled long distances “riding the rods” on the railway. This expression arose in the “Dirty Thirties” because men would climb on the reinforcing rods underneath the old wooden box cars and go wherever the train would take them. It was highly illegal and very dangerous, because if you lost your grip, you didn’t stand much chance under the freight train. The image in the United States was captured in the book “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.
Bill had some stocks but not too many and was able to survive. But in Hamilton, not only was there an immediate cut in salaries by the new Mayor Sam Lawrence but threatened cuts in staff had to be vigorously defended in City Council. Fortunately Bill had some friends on Council who spoke up for him but it was a time of high anxiety. And to add to this, in 1930 Helene was expecting with a due date in December. After several miscarriages, they were thrilled but also worried for the future.
The depression created another problem. Bill’s younger brother Albert was in the Hamilton Sanitarium with tuberculosis. Bill had purchased a small farm near Aldershot for Bert to live when he had improved enough to leave the San. When Bert died, the family had used the farm as a summer escape from Hamilton. Also Bill’s father John Deadman, had been persuaded to give up the farm in Tecumseth Township and move with family into the town of Beeton. Bill’s father died in 1928 and his mother died early in 1931 so only his brother Eric and his Aunt Christine remained. Bill was paying the bills for this and he now could not cover the costs. As a result, he decided to move them to the Aldershot farm and sell the house in Beeton. Real estate prices were very low so he didn’t get very much for them. In 1933 our family moved from the house at 91 Delaware Avenue to the Aldershot Farm. Bill was concerned that the City wanted all its employees to live in the city. So he did not sell the house on Delaware but rented it out. This gave them some extra income that was very helpful.
His doctor friends in Hamilton were mostly in private practice and their practices shrank when many people could not afford the fees. Many were forced to accept whatever their patients could give them. A number of collection agencies sprang up to service the physician services but doctors were reluctant to call them because it meant that many patients would not get care. Everyone was struggling but Bill felt fortunate that he was in a salaried position and didn’t have to worry about a stable income.
1 An engraved announcement is in the archives.
2 The name Trenaman is a corruption of Twentyman, a name that appears in the Domesday Book and is traced back to the Battle of Hastings when one of Harold’s men slew twenty Normans with a battle axe and dagger. According to tradition, he was knighted by Harold on the field but this is highly speculative because Harold did not win the day and died on the battlefield leaving no records of the event.
3 Jumping ship was desertion, a crime punishable by death.
4 I can remember a few homes in my youth which were lighted by gas, and when electric lighting came in, early in the 20th century, the electric wires were pushed through the old gas pipes and light bulbs were hung on the old gas lighting fixtures.
5 People younger than 60 don’t know what stove polish is because they usually can’t remember cast iron wood burning stoves and kitchen ranges. But the stoves turned black from the smoke and soot and rusted and the whole kitchen was impossible to keep clean. So stove polish cleaned it up, removed the rust, and gave the stove a clean black finish which wouldn’t burn off as paint would.
6 One of them, Jean Christie, lived to be 98. Her daughter, Barbara is a close friend, living in Huntsville.
7 Sometime in the 1930s, Kingsthorpe became part of Strathallan College for girls. It is now part of Hillfield-Strathallan College which is co-educational.
8 The lead author recalls: “Just because I remember my aunt talking about it, we stayed at the Myrtle Bank for a few days in 1964, when we were on vacation in Jamaica. It was long past its glory days by then, definitely a faded and crumbling dowager, but I could imagine its grandeur in 1919. I read in the paper that it burned down a few years after we were there.”
9 There was an exception to the prohibition law that allowed physicians to order brandy or similar drinks ‘for medicinal purposes’. This led to a great demand from patients for their doctors to order alcohol. On the prescription, it was shown as ‘olio riscini’ and often Bill or Dan would order it for their own use.
10 Ontario never had a highway number 1 although the Queen Elizabeth Way, built in 1939 was sometimes assigned that slot.
11 Frederick was the son of William Banting, from whom the Deadmans had bought the farm north of Beeton.
12 Bill kept in touch with other pathologists, nearly all of whom were in teaching hospitals. Although the Hamilton General Hospital was non-teaching, Bill got an appointment at the University of Western Ontario and later at the University of Toronto. He had interns from both at the HGH.
13 Several letters are of significance. In 1924 Dr. W. L. Robinson at the Toronto General Hospital wrote to Dr. F. B. Mallory at the Boston City Hospital to introduce Bill and have visiting privileges extended to him.
Dr. Elliot Ballantyne at UWO wrote to him giving his experience in pathology and asking for a position at HGH. Subsequent discussions are not in the file.
i “William Berczy Co-Founder of Toronto” by John Andre © 1967
ii City Laboratories of Pathology and Public Health, May 1st, 1956. William J. Deadman, B.A., M.B. Director 1914 – 1956. Unpublished typewritten document.
iii Ibid, p. 4