Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mayo, Charles (1837-1877)
MAYO, CHARLES (1837–1877), army surgeon, born at Winchester 13 Jan. 1837, was elder son of Charles Mayo, F.R.C.S. (1788– 1876), senior surgeon of Winchester County Hospital, descended from the Rev. John Mayo, vicar of Avebury, Wiltshire, 1712–46. He was elected on the foundation of Winchester College in 1847, and of New College, Oxford, where he became fellow in 1856. He graduated B.A. 1859, M.A. 1863, D.M. 1871, M.R.C.S. 1861, M.R.C.P. 1869. In October 1862 he proceeded to America, where he was staff surgeon-major and medical inspector of the 13th U.S. army corps with Grant's army at the siege of Vicksburg (see his ‘Medical Service of the Federal Army’ in Vacation Tourists, 1862–3).
The next few years he spent partly at Oxford, where he was coroner of the university, 1865–9, and dean of New College, and partly in London as physician to the General Dispensary in Bartholomew Close.
On the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 he entered the medical service of the German army as staff surgeon-major, and was appointed director of the Alice Hospital at Darmstadt, which was built under his superintendence. This hospital was in existence for nine months, and about 700 German and 250 French sick and wounded soldiers were treated in it; the number of deaths was only 51. At the close of the war he received five decorations, and the German ministry of war expressed ‘its most thankful acknowledgment for the prudence and untiring energy with which you have built, fitted out, and conducted up to the present time the Alice Hospital.’ He was also made a knight of the Hessian order of Philip the Generous. The campaign in Atchin next gave him the opportunity of entering the Dutch medical service, and he was present with the expedition from Holland in the swamps of Sumatra 1873–4, and wrote the account of the war which appeared in the ‘Times’ of 19 Oct. 1874, and was subsequently reprinted.
Being still unwilling to settle in England he sailed for Fiji as one of the government medical officers in 1875. Here, after suffering much discomfort, he was attacked with acute dysentery, and dying on the voyage to Sydney, was buried at sea, 15 July 1877. He was unmarried.
Mayo was not only a skilful medical man, but a good architect and musician. He wrote a ‘History of Wimborne Minster,’ 1860; and in 1875 a pamphlet on the ‘Organ in New College Chapel.’ He also edited the thirteenth edition of the ‘Seaman's Medical Guide.’
[Kirby's Winchester Scholars, pp. 220, 322; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, 1715–1886; Hist. of Mayo Family, 1882.]