Henry Augustus Ellis (1861-1939) physician and politician, was born on 21 July 1861 at Omagh, Tyrone, Ireland, fourth son of Colonel Francis Ellis of the Enniskillen Fusiliers and Louisa McMahon. He was educated at St Columba’s College, Dundrum, and then privately at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, before studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1879 (M.B., 1884; Ch.B., 1885). He migrated to Sydney in 1885 where he was to remain for 10 years, practising in Double Bay, and was an honorary surgeon at the Sydney Hospital from 1891-92. He had studied the growth of germs and collaborated with Dr Herbert Butcher in experiments designed to exterminate rabbits by spreading disease among them. He married Francis ‘Fanny’ Margaret SPEER in 1889 at Woollahra, New South Wales. Francis passed away in 1899 in Sydney NSW.
A Young Dr Ellis – Photo Coolgardie Museum
In 1894 Dr Ellis went to Perth WA following the depression after the great bank failures. Following the discovery of the Eastern Goldfields he moved to Coolgardie in 1897 where he was health officer and superintendent of the government sanatorium at Coolgardie. He drew up a code of by-laws which was later copied on other goldfields, and gained a reputation as a kindly, effective practitioner who was also a learned, if at times, abstract conversationalist over a wide range of literary and political thoughts.
In 1899-1900 he led a campaign to separate the goldfields from Western Australia, if the Perth government should refuse to join the Federation. He was the prime organizer, draftsman and propagandist for the Federal League, whose motto was ‘Separation for Federation’. In 1901 Ellis was an unsuccessful candidate for the first Senate elections, but in 1904 he won the Coolgardie seat in the Legislative Assembly for the Labour Party. He supported equal pay for women, old-age pensions, compulsory arbitration and the White Australia policy. In parliament he campaigned for an eight-hour day for nurses. He also served on the Municipal Council in Coolgardie in 1912.
On 4 April 1914 in Kalgoorlie, he married Kassie Gordon WYLIE, a 38 year old schoolteacher, and they moved to England. Ellis represented the Western Australian government at the International Congress on Medical Electrology and Radiology at Lyons, France. He worked through World War I as a tuberculosis officer at Middlesbrough Hospital, Yorkshire, and was a commandant of the Red Cross Society. From 1919 he was assistant physician at Margaret Street Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, London. He then practised privately in Harley Street as a specialist in tuberculosis, having studied miners’ phthisis. His publications displayed an awareness of the psychological factors in sickness. Ellis was also an inventor, a good draughtsman and amateur photographer. His flowing moustache and beard contributed to an
‘uncommonly commanding appearance’
and while he expressed himself whimsically, his thought was unconventional. After a long illness he died at Crow Borough, Sussex, on 3 October 1939, survived by his second wife. He had no children by either of his marriages. A brilliant and versatile pioneer on the Western Australian goldfields, he was remembered affectionately despite, or perhaps because of, the high-mindedness which had limited his success in politics.
Dr Ellis 1909 – Cyclopaedia of WA
References – Biographical Dictionary of Australia
The Cyclopaedia of Western Australia – TROVE
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