Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/379

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Struthers
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Struthers

tiana, daughter of Richard Staveley. He had issue by both marriages.

His grandson Henry, on the recommendation of George Grenville [q. v.], was appointed private secretary to Lord Olive during his last visit to India in 1764. Olive afterwards spoke of his abilities in the highest terms in the House of Commons on 30 March 1772. On 5 Dec. 1768 he was returned to parliament for Pontefract, and on 10 Oct. 1774 for Bishop's Castle in Shropshire, one of Olive's boroughs. This seat he vacated in 1778 on being appointed clerk of deliveries of ordnance, and was returned on 1 Oct. for Saltash. In 1780 he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and on 26 June was again returned for Bishop's Castle in place of Alexander Wedderburn (afterwards first Earl of Rosslyn) [q. v.] This seat he retained until 1802, when he was returned on 7 July for the Sussex borough of East Grinstead, which he represented until his retirement in 1807.

In 1774 Strachey was appointed secretary to the commission for restoring peace to America, and from October 1780 to April 1782 he was principal storekeeper of the ordnance. From 29 March to 15 July 1782 he was joint secretary of the treasury. In the same year he became joint under-secretary of state for the home department, and in the negotiations for peace with the American colonies at Paris in 1783 he assisted the king's commissioners (see Hodgins, British and American Diplomacy affecting Canada, 1900). In that year he was again storekeeper of the ordnance from 12 April to December, and in 1794 master of the king's household. In 1801 he was created a baronet. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He died in London on 1 Jan. 1810 in Hill Street, Berkeley Square. On 23 May 1770 he married Jane, only daughter of John Kelsall of Greenwich, and widow of Thomas Latham, captain in the royal navy. She died on 12 Feb. 1824, leaving three sons and a daughter. The second son, Edward (1774-1832), and his wife Julia (d. 20 Nov. 1847), youngest daughter of Major-general William Kirkpatrick [q. v.], were friends of Thomas Carlyle (Froude, Life of Carlyle; Carlyle, Reminiscences, ed. Froude).

[Gent. Mag. 1810, i. 93; Official Ret. Memb. of Parl.; Burke's Peerage; Sir A. J. Arbuthnot's Lord Clive, 1900 (Builders of Greater Britain).]

STRUTHERS, Sir JOHN (1823–1899), anatomist, second son of Alexander Struthers, was born at Brucefield, Dunfermline, on 21 Feb. 1823, and was educated privately. He studied medicine in Edinburgh, where he was admitted successively a licentiate and a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and a doctor of medicine of the university in 1845. On 22 Oct. 1847 he was licensed by the Royal College of Surgeons to teach anatomy in the extramural school, which he did so successfully that he was invited to supply the place of Professor John Goodsir (1814-1867) [q. v.] during his illness in the winter of 1853–4.

In 1854 Struthers was appointed one of the assistant surgeons to the Royal Infirmary, and a few years later he became full surgeon, an office he resigned in 1863, when he was appointed to the chair of anatomy at Aberdeen. The university of Aberdeen had begun a new existence on 15 Sept. 1860 by the fusion of the two old universities, and by the new scheme law and medicine were taught in Marischal College. The accommodation, however, was meagre, and the students were few, when Struthers entered on his duties; but when he left the university in 1889 the number of students had more than doubled, and there was a museum of anatomy which was almost unequalled, while the Royal Infirmary had been greatly enlarged, and was famous throughout the United Kingdom for the excellence of its clinical teaching. In 1881 Struthers established a medal and a prize for anatomy in the university of Aberdeen, and in 1889 he resigned his post and returned to Edinburgh.

In Edinburgh he became chairman of the board of directors of Leith Hospital, and worked hard to secure its extension to a hundred beds to satisfy the academic teaching requirements. He was also elected a manager of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where he was particularly interested in the improvement and extension of the operating theatres.

Struthers was a member and president of the Royal Physical Society, and a member of the board of management of the Royal Dispensary, Edinburgh. In 1885 the university of Glasgow conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. He was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh from 1895 to 1897, and he then proved a great benefactor to the museum. He remained a vice-president and an examiner of the college until his death. He was a member of the General Medical Council for the united universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen from 1883-6, and for the university of Aberdeen alone from 1886-91. He served in this body as chairman of the education com-