Henry Aubrey Husband was born October 10, 1844 at
Bushy Vere Park, Jamaica. He was the eldest son of Rev. Edward and
Elizabeth Husband and heir apparent to the estate of Green Vale a
coffee plantation which had been in the Husband family for over two
hundred years. It was owned by his grandparents. At one time in their
history they had seventy-five slaves on this estate.
At the age of ten, the doctor's father died and he was sent to England
to be educated. He took up medicine in Scotland's Edinburgh University
and in six years passed all his exams and at the age of twenty-one had
the following degrees: MBCM, BSc., FRCSE, and MRCSE. From there he
worked as a doctor in a Mental Hospital in London, England, and after
that as a general practitioner until 1870. At that time he started his
own practice in London and married Georgina Greville.
Owing to financial difficulties over which he had no control, Dr.
Husband decided to come to Canada. In the spring of 1885, he arrived in
the old town of Millford and soon established a homestead in what was
to become the Wawanesa district. He brought with him his family of five
from Brandon to live in a tent in Millford until such time as a house
could be built on the homestead SE 36-7-17. He hauled the lumber from
Brandon, a distance of thirty miles.
He was the first doctor in the region and had been in Millford only a
few days when his practice began which was to take him many hundreds of
miles. He went east beyond the present town of Glenboro, south as far
as Pelican Lake, Ninette and Belmont, and halfway to Brandon. He was
Health Inspector for Wawanesa and drew up the sanitary rules. He was
coroner and also a justice of the peace. He also owned the Apothecary
in Wawanesa which was operated by Mr. Jump.
Husband wrote a number of medical books and lectures. He was always in
favor of fresh air and sunshine. He used to tell housewives not to iron
their towels, tea towels or sheets, but to leave the sunshine's rays in
them. Once, in the spirit of helpful citizenship, wrote a letter to the
Brandon Sun warning parents against “a most dangerous practice, far too
common in this country, of administering to young children
indiscriminate doses of laudanum and other preparations of opium.”
In 1905, the doctor inherited the estate in Jamaica. So he and Mrs.
Husband went back and there he took up the cause of the natives. He was
always on the side of the underdog, as in England. There he was frowned
upon for advocating the opening of museums and botannical gardens on
Sunday so that the working people could have the pleasure of seeing
them. He talked the same for Jamaica. He wanted better wages, better
living conditions, and better schools. Since his death in 1933, vast
improvements have been made including
a university at Kingston.
The Prairie Pioneer Doctor
Being a doctor is hard work at any time, but especially so in the
pioneer days when the only means of travel were oxen, horse, or on
foot. Dr. Husband tried them all. Sometimes the pay was in the form of
produce and sometimes none at all.
One time the doctor had to cross a railway bridge at Milford one-half a
mile long on his hands and knees in the middle of the night. Often a
trip took three or four days; sometimes it meant doing an 'operation on
a kitchen table with only coal oil lamps or lanterns and sometimes a
member of the family was too nervous to hold the light.
Adapted from Sipiweski, page 336, Oakland Echoes &
The Prairie
W.A.S.P.
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