Dr. Robert M. Stimpson - Extraordinary Army Surgeon

Robert Stimpson was born in Manchester, Jamaica, in 1868. He received his early education from the Rev. C. L. Barnes, a Black Anglican clergyman. He left school when he was 14, and worked in his step-father’s shop, until he was 19, but he continued his education, by studying after the shop closed at 9 o’clock at night. He won a place to study at the Kingston Public Hospital, where he qualified as a pharmacist. He then opened his own pharmacy, and continued to save his money so that he could go away to study medicine. In 1895 he qualified to go to Bishop’s University in Montreal, Canada, where he did very well in all his courses, coming first in four of them. He graduated with 1st class honours in 1898.

After this he went to the USA and had a medical practice in Detroit. When the war broke out in Cuba he joined the US army, and went to Cuba as an army doctor. He was the first, and at that time the only, Black doctor serving as an officer with a White regiment in the US army. After Cuba he took a post at an army hospital in Puerto Rico; later he was offered a permanent post in the US regular army, but he turned down the offer, in order to complete his medical studies in Britain. There, at Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, he obtained advanced medical degrees; he then returned to Jamaica to practise as a doctor in his native parish, Manchester. He was elected to the Manchester Parochial Board (like the modern Parish Council); he represented his church at the diocesan synod; he served as a Government medical officer in Manchester and St. Elizabeth; he was appointed a Justice of the Peace.

Dr. Robert Stimpson was a highly qualified doctor and a high-principled servant of the public in Jamaica.

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