Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/536

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Douglas
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Douglas

Andrews in 1857. He entered the navy as assistant-surgeon in 1840. He was at once appointed to the Vesuvius and sent out to the Mediterranean, where, on the coast of Syria, he had his first experience of the realities of war, and where, after the capture of Acre, he was placed in charge of the wounded in a temporary hospital established on shore. Four years later he was medical officer and secretary of an embassy to the emperor of Morocco under (Sir) John Hay Drummond-Hay [q. v. Suppl. I], appointed in 1845 consul-general. Donnet was promoted to be surgeon, and in 1849 was in the Calypso in the West Indies during a violent outbreak of yellow fever. In 1850-1 he was surgeon of the Assistance in the Arctic with Captain (Sir) Erasmus Ommanney [q. v. Suppl. II], and helped to break the tedium of the long winter by editing 'an excellent periodical, entitled the "Aurora Borealis," to which the men as well as the officers contributed' (Markham, 113). In 1854 he was surgeon of the President, flag-ship in the Pacific, and in her was present at the disastrous attacks on Petropaulowski, on 29 Aug. and 7 Sept. (Clowes, vi. 429–32). In May 1867 he was promoted deputy inspector-general, and for the next two years was in medical charge of the hospital at Jamaica, years marked by an epidemic of yellow fewer. In 1870 he was appointed honorary surgeon to the queen, and in 1873-4 was placed in charge of the medical wards of Haslar, crowded with cases of smallpox, enteric fever, and dysentery after the Ashanti war. On 14 April 1875 he was promoted inspector-general. He was after this employed on various committees and commissions, including one in 1876 to select a site for a college for naval cadets and one in 1877 to inquire into the causes of the outbreak of scurvy in Sir George Nares' Arctic expedition (1875–6). He was awarded a good-service pension in 1878, and was nominated K.C.B. at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. During his last years he resided at Bognor, where he died on 11 Jan. 1905. He married in 1852 Eliza, daughter of James Meyer, who died in 1903 without issue. He published 'Notes on Yellow Fever.'

[Royal Navy Lists; Who's Who; The Times, 12 Jan. 1905; Markham, Life of Sir Leopold McClintock, 1909; Clowes, Royal Navy, vol. vi. 1901.]

J. K. L.


DOUGLAS, Sir ADYE (1815–1906), premier of Tasmania, son of an officer in the army, was born at Thorpe near Norwich on 30 May 1815, and was intended for the navy. He was sent to school in Hampshire, and then to Caen, Normandy, for two years. Returning to England, he was articled to a firm of solicitors in Southampton, and in 1838 was admitted to practice. He emigrated to Tasmania in 1839, and in the same year was admitted to the bar at Hobart. He was, however, soon (1840) tempted to try a squatter's life in Victoria, and there spent two years. Returning to Tasmania in 1842, he founded the legal firm of Douglas & Collins at Launceston, and became one of the leading lawyers in the colony.

In 1853, on the introduction of a regular municipal administration for Launceston, Douglas became an alderman of the town, of which he was subsequently five times mayor. It was about this time he made a name by his vigorous opposition to the system of transportation. He was defeated at his first attempt to enter the council, but in July 1855 he took his seat in the old legislative council as member for Launceston. He was from the first forward in urging the claims of Tasmania to a constitution of greater responsibility. In 1857 he revisited England for a time, and came back to Tasmania full of projects for introducing railways into the colony. In 1862, under the new constitution, he represented Westbury in the assembly. In 1863 he was delegate for Tasmania to the conference on intercolonial tariffs.

In 1871 he was elected member for Norfolk plains and in 1872 for Fingal. On 15 Aug. 1884, Douglas became premier and chief secretary of Tasmania, and after a somewhat uneventful period of office resigned on 8 March 1886 to go to England as first agent-general for the colony. He represented Tasmania at the Colonial Conference of 1887, but in October 1887 resigned his agency and returned, to Tasmania.

In 1890 Douglas re-entered the political life of the colony as member for Launceston in the legislative council, and represented Tasmania at the Federal Convention at Sydney in 1891. He served in the Dobson ministry as chief secretary from 17 Aug. 1892 to 14 April 1894, when he became president of the legislative council; this position he held for ten years, being knighted at the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. In May 1904 he was defeated at the elections for Launceston, and retired from public life. He died on 10 April 1906 at Hobart, where he had come to reside ten years before; he was buried at the Cornelian Bay cemetery.

Of striking personality, he gave the impression of being brusque and unsympathetic, until he was more intimately known.