Sir Henry Alfred Alford Nicholls CMG FLS (27 September 1851 – 9 February 1926) was a physician, disease specialist, horticulturist, zoologist and legislator in, and publicist for Dominica for over 50 years.
[4] He graduated in medicine (MB and CM) at the University of Aberdeen in 1873,[5] and gained his MD degree from St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1875.
There, with the help of their carriers (four men and some boys) they climbed up through heavily forested slopes and found Boiling Lake – "a large sheet of water in a constant state of ebullition."
[8] In 1883 he wrote a letter giving a vivid description of the impact of a hurricane on 4 September, with 5 churches destroyed and over 400 families homeless in Roseau.
[10] On 28 February 1880, Nicholls escorted 14 year-old George Prince of Wales (the future King George V), and his elder brother Prince Albert Victor, first on ponies and then on foot to the "highest point in the island, Morne Diablotin, 5,314 feet high, nearly a thousand feet higher than the highest point in Great Britain, Ben Nevis.
At the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in South Kensington in 1886, he had a large showcase containing samples of many of Dominica's natural products, including essential oils, cocoa, sulphur, bark, coffee, annato [sic] and vanilla.
[20] The demand for it was such that the book was reprinted seven times at intervals of about five years; it was also translated into several languages along with Swiss-Venezuelan geographer and botanist Henri François Pittier.
[22] Soon after his election as a Corresponding Member of the Zoological Society of London (CMZS), Nicholls donated two common boas and seven slender-fingered frogs to the zoo.
[24] He noted that now that Dominica had become the last port of call by the Quebec Steamship Company on its West Indies to New York line "there is no reason why the planters of the island should not participate in the profits from the banana trade", which currently was dominated by Jamaica.
Everything which he produced was turning to gold, except donkeys, seven or eight of which were feeding under his windows, and which multiplied so fast that he could not tell what to do with them.In 1889 The Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana sought and received advice on the packing of fruit for export.
Nicholls gave precise instructions on when and how to cut oranges and limes, wrap them in a special paper, and pack them in specific designs of crate or barrel.
[26] Henry Nicholls learned of his knighthood by telegram from the Governor of Dominica: "It gives me much pleasure to inform you that His Majesty has been graciously pleased to approve of K.B.
Condolences were received from far and wide, including Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall, Secretary of the West India Committee, J Pierpont Morgan Jr. who was visiting Trinidad and J H Menzies in Canada, who wrote of Nicholls in an article entitled "The Uncrowned King of Dominica".