Alfred Downing Fripp (surgeon)

Jeanie had gained a 'Senior Optime' in Mathematics at Girton College in 1886 and soon after married William Hale-White, son of Mark Rutherford.

Six years passed in medical studies, sporting activities and theatre-going, when he accepted a two-week job as a locum tenens for Dr Jalland, a Guy's Hospital alumnus, in York.

The Fripps were found a cottage near Osborne House where they befriended Guglielmo Marconi who was demonstrating his new telegraph machine to Queen Victoria.

Along with the Prince of Wales and Sir James Reid, Fripp was one of the first people to send an official message using Marconi's invention.

Knowing Fripp socially - at places like Warwick Castle, where he was often a guest of Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick and her husband - she and her committee (mainly composed of Society ladies) selected Fripp to turn an empty bit of the Karoo, chosen by Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, into an Army hospital for 500 yeomanry patients.

With generous funding from the committee and the acquiescence of the military commander, Arthur Sloggett, Fripp transformed the idea of how to run a base hospital: despite being scoffed for doing it, he took over five times as many nurses as the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) provided for a similar number of patients; he took more orderlies and assistants (including his wife who, leaving their son with her mother, travelled with him - and was later rewarded with a Royal Red Cross medal for keeping the men supplied with cigarettes and other such 'comforts'[2]); and he took a physician, Dr. Washbourn, a dental expert, Newland-Pedley - both from Guy's - and an X-ray specialist, Hall-Edwards from Birmingham: three such specialists had never been taken to war before.

hospitals - where men were dying in squalor - that when the MP, William Burdett-Coutts, reported the facts to Parliament and The Times, there was public outrage.

One of their choices was Alfred Keogh whom Brodrick appointed as Chairman of the working Committee; others were Cooper Perry of Guy's and Sir Frederick Treves.

King Edward made sure his Government put the committee's recommendations into practice before the end of his reign, but knighted Fripp for his part in instigating the reforms much earlier - on 18 July 1903; at 37, the youngest doctor to receive this title.

Years later, Brodrick wrote, "(I was) chief guest to a dinner given to celebrate the splendid service of the corps in the Great War.

[4] After one year, the government decided that employing civilian experts was an unnecessary expense, so Fripp returned to voluntary surgical and advisory work in London hospitals set up by his wealthy friends in their palatial houses.

She sued him for libel in May, 1918, and a bizarre court case ensued during which - among other things - Billing implied that Margot Asquith, who employed a German governess and was a devotee of Allan's provocative act, was a danger to the security of the State.

Billing won his case, and then the War ended - but not before Fripp had invited David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda and Dr Perry to his house to discuss the setting-up of a Ministry of Health.

Temple formed Ye Ancient Order of Froth Blowers (AOFB),[5] aiming to raise £100 from life-membership fees (5/-) and fines at meetings.

Fripp left money to Durham University for an annual lecture on "Happiness and Success", the first - in 1932 - being given by Stanley Baldwin and another by Baden-Powell.

He wrote a book with a colleague – Human Anatomy For Art Students – illustrated by his cousin, Henry Charles Innes Fripp (1867-1963).