by Laura Bray
You have probably never heard of Pearson Robert Cresswell, but had you lived in Dowlais in the late 19th Century, if you were lucky, he may have saved your life.
Pearson Cresswell was born on 24 July 1834, the second son of Charles and Ann Cresswell, a solicitor and his wife, then living in Henwick, near Worcester. It was in Worcester that Pearson grew up, although while he was still in school, the family emigrated to Australia. Indeed, it is in Melbourne, that his parents and siblings lived and died.
This was not to be Pearson’s destiny, however, as in the 1850s he returned to the UK to study medicine, training in Middlesex Hospital and the Medical Centre in London, qualifying in 1859 as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (he became a Fellow in 1873). But our interest in him dates from May 1860, when he secured the post of Chief Surgeon to the Dowlais Iron Company, an appointment he retained for the next 40 years, until his retirement and death on 22 Nov 1905 aged 71.
Pearson was a noted medic in Dowlais, running a private practice as well as working for the Dowlais Iron Company and running both the Dowlais Workman’s Hospital and the Merthyr and Dowlais General Hospital.
However, it was for his work on antiseptics, particularly for the treatment of gunshot wounds and fractures or other serious injury, that he was a pioneer. He published several papers on it, and influenced thinking and practice on surgical techniques, such as the use of gloves in operations. He also promoted vaccination, becoming both Public Vaccinator and Medical Officer of the First District of the Merthyr Tydfil Union and of the Pant Fever Hospital. He was a staunch advocate of First Aid, delivering lectures on the subject and encouraging ordinary people to understand the principles. As such, he became the president of the Merthyr Centre of the St John’s Ambulance Association from 1881, when it was founded in Merthyr, and indeed it is from this that he was awarded a special mark of distinction in 1897 as a honorary associate of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England.
You would have thought that all these activities would have kept Pearson Cresswell busy, but no. He was a Justice of the Peace for Glamorgan, held a special commission as a Justice in Lunacy, was Chairman of the Income Tax Commission and High Constable of Caerphilly Higher. In addition, he was a Church Warden of St John’s Parish Church in Dowlais, president of the South Wales Branch of the English Church Union and Chairman of the Dowlais Constitutional Club.
Perhaps it is his connection with the Volunteer Force that is the most difficult for us to understand today. Just after his arrival in Dowlais, Pearson was gazetted as an associate surgeon in the Administrative Battalion 2nd Glamorgan Rifle Volunteer Corps, founded the year before. By 1891 he had become the Lieutenant Colonel Commander of the Administrative Battalion for all the companies in the Taff Valleys, which by this point had been consolidated. He “professionalised” the Corps, turning it into first a territorial and then the Volunteer Battalion Welsh Regiment, standardising the uniform, creating a cycling corps and establishing an officers’ and non-commissioned officers’ mess, equipped the regiment with machine guns and cleared the debts. Thus it was that he was able to raise and send three companies from the Regiment to the South African War.
Pearson died after a short illness in November 1905, in Dowlais, leaving a wife, two sons and two daughters, both sons having followed him into the medical profession. He was buried in Malvern, next to his first wife and daughter.
A man of his time, he was part of a time of change in Dowlais, and it is recognition of the importance of Merthyr during the nineteenth century that a man such as Pearson Cresswell lived and influenced thinking and practise there and in the wider world, for 40 years.