Morton E Hall: Conservator of the Canadian War Museum in London,England during the Great War and Alberta’s Second Pathologist

Abstract

Morton Eldred Hall (1887–1975), a little known pioneer pathologist in Western Canada who had trained at Belleview Hospital in New York City, arrived at the newly forming medical school at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1914. Shortly after this, First World War broke out and Hall enlisted. He was eventually posted at the Royal College of Surgeons in London where he assisted Sir Arthur Keith, the conservator of the Hunterian Museum and the Army Medical Collection, pathological specimens derived from fallen Dominion soldiers which were to be preserved as teaching specimens to help train military surgeons. Keith and Morton published important papers documenting the types of wounds generated by modern warfare. These papers are all that remain of the British War Collection as the museum was bombed by the Germans during Second World War. Specimens derived from Canadian casualties had been repatriated to Canada. Hall briefly served as the conservator for the Canadian Medical War Museum, the name given to Canadian specimens. After safely getting these precious war relics home in 1919, Hall returned to Edmonton where he was head of pathology at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, associate professor of pathology, and developed unique insights into university politics.

Keywords

Arthur Keith Edmonton Heber Mosher Henry Tory Morton Hall University of Alberta War Museum

Morton Eldred Hall was born on October 30th, 1887¹ to Samuel Hall (1854–1922) and Mary Alice (Cook) Hall (1860–1932)^2,3 on a farm in Gordon Township near the small town of Gore Bay on Manitoulin Island in Georgian Bay (Lake Huron), Ontario, Canada. He was the younger of two children. Morton was a grandson of Willard Hall (18 April 1819–20 September 1902), who was the first white settler on Manitoulin Island. Willard Hall, originally in the lumber industry in New Brunswick, Canada, arrived in Gores Bay in either late 1868 or 1869 and he lived amongst the Indians for about a year before other white settlers arrived.⁴ Willard was already married to Jane (Dinsmore) Hall (1832–1891), originally from Ireland, and they already had a large family when he moved to Gore Bay. Morton’s father, Samuel was the oldest of nine children and, although sources are contradictory, was probably almost 20 years old at the time of move. There is a cairn erected to Willard’s memory in Gore Bay.

Both Morton and his older brother Willard (1879–1966)⁵ were born on Manitoulin Island and attended a school their grandfather helped establish. When Morton Hall finished with the Island schools, he enrolled in the University of Toronto (UofT) where he studied geology but later switched to medicine. He received both a B.A. and an M.D.

After graduating from medical school at the UofT in 1909, Dr. Hall began training in pathology at the Toronto General Hospital and subsequently Bellevue Hospital in New York City where he worked for about two years. A review of PubMed and IndexCat reveals only one publication from his time at Bellevue. In 1912–13, Hall published “A case of so-called “Kruckenberg’s” tumor of the ovary” in the Proceedings of the New York Pathological Society. His presentation was well-received and was discussed by several prominent New York City pathology professors.⁶ The paper has been cited as an early example of this entity.

Hall also presented a detailed report on the pathological changes (osteitis and periosteitis) seen in the frontal, parietal, occipital and petrous portion of the left temporal bone in a patient with cranial syphilis, and then reviewed the pathology of similar cases at the New York Neurological Society meeting on April 1, 1913. This was later published by the neurologists without including him as an author, but crediting him for the pathological descriptions.⁷

It was while Hall was working at Bellevue Hospital that Dr. Heber Havelock Moshier (1889–1918), a fellow UofT medical classmate, contacted Hall and convinced him to move to the West and join the fledgling University of Alberta (UofA) medical school in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, as its pathologist. Moshier had just been appointed head of physiology at the new medical faculty.⁸

Morton Hall was hired as demonstrator of pathology and arrived in Edmonton for the first time in August of 1914, where, amongst other duties, he was responsible for giving tissue diagnosis on surgical specimens at the original Southside Strathcona Hospital (later renamed the University Hospital). He was also involved in helping design curriculum at the newly founded UofA Medical School, which at this point offered only premedical and two years of basic science training. The University President, Henry Marshall Tory MA, DSc (1864–1947) acted as dean of the medical faculty until the first dean was appointed in 1920. But Tory took time off during First World War (WWI) to establish Khaki University, a temporary (1917–1919) Canadian university that was implemented in England and France in collaboration with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) to address unmet educational needs of Canadian soldiers.^8,9

First World War

With the onset of WWI, Hall enlisted along with many of his physician colleagues in Edmonton. At the beginning of the War, it was common for Canadian medical schools and hospitals to establish and staff Canadian military hospitals in France. The nascent UofA Medical School, which was not yet fully staffed, was not in a position to do this, but they wanted to do something. According to Hall:

During 1915 authority came for recruitment of a field Ambulance Section with Mosher, Hurlburt, and I as officers. Practically the entire first year medical class enlisted. Very soon I was ordered to Kingston [Ontario, Canada] to take charge of epidemics of meningitis and shortly the Queen’s medical faculty was taken over by the Army and I acted as professor of pathology there. (¹⁰p.1)

After this, Hall was posted to London, England, and he worked with Sir Arthur Keith (1866–1955) at the Royal College of Surgeons at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Hall’s start date there is unclear (1917 vs. 1918) but he was there in 1918 and part of 1919. Unfortunately, his friend Mosher was killed in action on August 29, 1918, at the age of 29; this would have political consequences at home and would alter the history of UofA Medical School.

Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London

During the War years, the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS), the home of the Hunterian Museum, was given the authority to collect, catalogue, and display instructive pathological specimens derived from Dominion war casualties on behalf of the military.^11,12 Because of the verbose tendency to praise every high-ranking British medical or military officer involved in the upstream process at every opportunity and in all publications, it is difficult to know the individual contributions of those who actually worked at the Museum and provided value-added expertise. The conservator of the Museum, Sir Arthur Keith,¹³ was assisted by Samuel G Shattock (1852–1924),¹⁴ a pathologist at St. Thomas’s Hospital and the RCS curator of pathology, and Cecil Beadles (1867–1933),¹⁵ Shattock’s assistant. Clearly, Shattock and Beadles were the most important “hands on” workers. Each Dominion country planning to establish its own war museum provided a military officer to help with this effort, but Keith considered them all but useless as they provided no technical expertise. The exception was Canada’s contribution, Captain Morton E. Hall, who was actually a pathologist.¹² According to Keith in his autobiography:

Each of the Dominion governments lent us an officer to assist Mr. Beadles, but it was technical assistance of which he stood in need. Of such assistance there was a great dearth in time of war … Ultimately it was he (Beadles) who shaped the whole collection and made it into a permanent whole. Captain Morton Hall and I assisted in some measure; we described the series which illustrated injuries to bone. The final catalogue [of all museum specimens] was solely the work of Cecil Beadles (Keith¹³, p.380–381).

Because of the shortage of staff with technical skills, the initial plan had been simply to store the specimens safely until after the war but Keith was asked to expedite their preparation for exhibition and teaching purposes, as this would facilitate training surgeons and help with the war effort. According to Keith, “Hall and I published a series of articles on the injuries of bones in the British Journal of Surgery (1918, vol. Vi; 1919, vol. Vii). Our articles were illustrated by excellent drawings made by Mr. A. S. Sewall”(Keith,¹³ p.381).

Keith and Morton’s first paper was entitled “Bones showing the effects of gunshot injuries, in the army medical collection now on exhibition in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.”¹⁶ It provides a summary of how the Army Medical Collection came about, an overview of the papers to come, and then focuses on the types of injuries affecting the calvaria or cranium. It begins as follows:

By the end of 1918, over 4,000 specimens had been forwarded to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England by the Medical Services of the British Imperial Forces, to illustrate the nature of the wounds and diseases which are met with under conditions of modern warfare. As the specimens arrived, they were numbered, registered, and suitably stored, every effort being made to obtain and keep a full history of each specimen. Of these specimens, 1155 have been prepared, mounted, described, and placed on exhibition in the Museum of the College, 688 of them as “wet” preparations to show the damaged conditions of the soft tissues, and 467 as macerated preparations to show the effects of gunshot injuries on the skeletal parts of the body. The “wet” preparations are being investigated, prepared, described, and constantly added to by Professor S.G. Shattock and Mr. Cecil Beadles. Here we propose to deal with the macerated series only, in which the various parts of the body are represented as follows: injuries affecting the calveria or cranium (109), face (37), spine (32), pelvis and sacrum (36), hip-joint (5), femur (76), knee-joint (14), leg (49), ankle-joint (9), foot (7), sternum (1), ribs (3), scapula (24), clavicle (14), shoulder-joint (3), humerus (27), elbow-joint (5), forearm (13), and carpus/hand (3). Total number of macerated specimens (467) (Keith and Hall,¹⁶ p.537).

This paper describes and illustrates three general typical types of cranial injuries [(1) contused, (2) penetrating, and (3) perforating (through-and-through)] as well as atypical variants of these types. The paper draws on 109 cases and is illustrated with 67 highly detailed drawings.¹⁶ It also provides a detailed description of the bone maceration method used for the series of papers; the method was attributed to Sergeant F.A. Izzard, an assistant in the Cambridge University Pathological Museum, who served at No. 1 Eastern General Hospital which treated tens of thousands of returning casualties on the Cambridge campus. Izzard’s preparations made at Cambridge early in the war were so highly prized that he was sent to France in March of 1917, and worked on the Army Collection for the RCS from there for over a year.¹⁶ These were then sent to London for Keith and Hall to complete any of the remaining preparation process, to mount, and to study.

Their second paper was entitled “Specimens of gunshot injuries of the face and spine, contained in the army medical collection now on exhibition in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.”¹⁷ The first part describes and illustrates facial injuries utilizing 37 cases; it characterizes the major features of three main categories: injuries of the obit, the maxilla, and the mandible. The second part deals with gunshot injuries to the spine, categorized by “the portion of the vertebral column chiefly involved.” It is based upon 50 cases, noting that “it has recently been enriched” by additional specimens above and beyond those listed in their first paper (Keith and Hall,¹⁷ p.67). This paper includes 37 drawings.

Their third paper was entitled “Specimens of gunshot injuries of the long bones, to show the type of fracture produced: Contained in the army medical collection now on exhibition in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.”¹⁸ Keith and Hall describe:

A number of typical specimens of gunshot injuries of the long bones, with particular reference to those of the lower extremity, to which are added some notes dealing with lesions of the clavicle. Those of the lower extremity may be considered as showing a type of injury characteristic of gunshot injuries of long bones generally, of which the collection contains a large number of specimens. We shall deal primarily with characteristic type of fractures and fissuring, while in a later article we shall discuss the associated processes of healing and infection which follow gunshot injuries (Keith and Hall,¹⁸ p.149).

This paper describes injuries to the femur, tibia, fibula, bones of the foot, and all lower extremity joints. It contains 49 drawings.

Their fourth and last paper was entitled “Specimens of long bones showing the processes of infection and repair: Contained in the army medical collection now on exhibition in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.”¹⁹ Its organization is similar to the third paper but is focused on healing and infection. It contains 33 drawings.

Alberti in his paper “The ‘regiment of skeletons’: a First World War medical collection” summarizes all papers written about the British War Museum macerated and “wet” specimens as follows:

Keith worked through the skeletal material with Canadian surgeon Morton E. Hall, the greatest published contribution in terms of number of specimens; [George H.] Makins published the vascular and cardiac sections, with a contribution from [John] Bland-Sutton; the pioneering surgeon Sir William Thorburn, Professor of Clinical Surgery at Manchester, wrote up those relating to his own area of interest, spinal injuries; and, finally, Shattock produced a mighty paper describing a range of the spirit-preserved gunshot wounds. These ten papers (seven of them in the British Journal of Surgery) published over a five-year span together comprised a disaggregated catalogue, acting as ambassadors for the collection and extending its educational and clinical potential” (Alberti,¹¹p.126).

The four papers by Keith and Hall as well as the other “disaggregated catalogue” papers^20–24 all became critically important historical documents as the entire collection was destroyed by Nazi bombs during the Second World War (WWII). According to Keith in his autobiography, “… all was reduced to debris, dirt, and dust by German bombs in 1941. Bombs of one war blotted out the treasured scars of its predecessor” (Keith,¹³ p.381). It is fortunate that Beadles did not live long enough to see his life’s work erased. Thankfully, the knowledge gained from the specimens was partially salvaged by the disaggregated catalogue. After the bombing destroyed the WWI collection, a new collection was started during WWII. According to Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor: “The first War Collection underwent complete annihilation when this College suffered so severely on May 10, 1941, and a fresh effort had to be made from the very beginning” (Gordon-Taylor,²⁵ p.129).

Hall’s involvement with the Canadian Medical War Museum

Fortunately, the specimens derived from fallen Canadian soldiers escaped that fate, as they had been repatriated to Canada to populate the Canadian Medical War Museum (CMWM), which was to be built in Ottawa.¹² Morton Hall played a major role in this as he helped pack up these specimens at the RCS and then received them in Canada. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1919:²⁶

A Report has been presented to the Director-General of Medical Services, Ottawa, by Captain Morton E. Hall, C.A.M.C., on the Museum material being received and mounted for the Canadian National War Museum in the Preparation Department of the Medical Museum of McGill University [i.e., Maude Abbott’s (1869-1940) laboratory], which has been made the depot for the reception and preparation of this material pending further arrangements … [Sixty-three boxes were received including]: 1^st. Macerated bones, 2^nd. Wet specimens illustrating gunshot wounds and action of poisonous gases on tissues, and 3^rd. Wet specimens illustrating ordinary clinical diseases that the Army Medical Officers were called upon to treat. (²⁶p.949)

The collection of macerated bones, approximately two hundred in number, is a very complete, valuable and instructive one, illustrating all varieties of gun-shot injuries and more particularly the associated processes of repair and infection. These specimens, in the years to come, must be of great value to the future Canadian war surgeon and more particularly will be of great value in the teaching of clinical surgery and pathology. It is suggested that the whole collection should be assembled in the Museum Building at Ottawa, and be made available for teaching purposes by the several Medical Colleges of Canada, and that they be kept together as a unit. … (²⁶pp.949–950)

It is unclear whether the macerated bone specimens received in Canada included any of the specimens used to write the four papers; because of the huge power differential between Hall and Keith, it seems unlikely that the entire collection was not retained by the RCS. This could have been easily justified as many of these would not have represented remains of Canadian dead, and even for those specimens that were of Canadian or other Dominion ally origin, Keith had been given the authority to retain specimens he deemed particularly valuable to the RCS as long as he replaced them with similar British specimens. It is known that the macerated bony specimens repatriated back to Canada were mostly those of McGill University pathologist Major Laurence Joseph Rhea (1877–1944), which were exquisitely prepared by him while serving in France and were highly prized, but there were other macerated specimens for which the provenance is currently unknown.¹² If Keith’s and Hall’s carefully prepared relics remained at the RCS, they were destroyed by Nazi bombing. If any of them came to Canada, they were lost through carelessness, as unfortunately, the entire CMWM was bureaucratically lost in the 1950s.¹² Surrealistically, almost all of the WWI museum pathological specimens for all warring factions have also been lost,²⁷ making the disaggregated catalogue even more precious.

The CMWM specimens were publically displayed in Canada several times before they went into storage and were lost. The final exhibition was at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) meeting in Montreal in 1920 (Figure 1). When writing another paper about trying to track the lost CMWM specimens several years ago,¹² one of us (JRW) contacted the ACS Archives, and discovered that even the Archives did not have a copy of the program and CMWM Catalogue (personal e-mail correspondence with ACS archivist). Strangely, when scanning the Internet, a copy was located in what seemed at the time to be an unlikely place, the UofA Library.²⁸ Perhaps, Morton Hall was responsible for this.

Figure 1.

Canadian Medical War Museum exhibit at the American College of Surgeon’s meeting in Montreal in 1920. Macerated bone specimens are in the front and plaster casts showing types of hand or facial deformities and surgical repair are in the middle. This image is in the public domain. Source: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/images?form=image&lang=eng&FormName=Image+Search&PageNum=1&SortSpec=score+desc&HighLightFields=title%2Cname&Language=eng&QueryParser=lac_mikan&Sources=mikan&Archives=&ShowForm=show&SearchIn_1=&SearchInText_1=Canadian+Medical+War+Museum+&Operator_1=AND&SearchIn_2=&SearchInText_2=&Operator_2=AND&SearchIn_3=&SearchInText_3=&Media%5B%5D=&Level=&MaterialDateOperator=after&MaterialDate=&MaterialDate=&DigitalImages=1&Source=&cainInd=&ResultCount=50; raw image digitally enhanced by Thomas Kryton, BFA.

Moving back to Edmonton, Alberta, at the end of the War

Although briefly in Ottawa at the end of the war to deal with war specimens, Hall eventually returned to Edmonton. When Morton Hall had arrived in Edmonton the first time in 1914, he became the second pathologist to practice in the Province of Alberta.⁸ The first pathologist in Alberta was Rosamond Leacock. However, it should be noted that neither was the first laboratory physician in the province as a provincial public health laboratory with a bacteriologist had been established a few year earlier.^29–31

The conditions during Hall’s early practice were as difficult as those experienced by Leacock. According to Hall:

When I took over the laboratories at the Alex (Royal Alexandra Hospital) in November 1919, there was not equipment in the 14 sq. foot room to be used for the laboratory. I provided about $400.00 worth of equipment. I borrowed an old B&L [Bausch and Lomb] microscope and the nursing staff had a small electric incubator which I found in the basement. Heating for tests was provided by a small oil burner. I also soon purchased a freezing microtome and employed a nursing sister, Ms. McNee as an assistant. During the first three years we developed many directions. First we gave direct transfusion and started the first secondary transfusion by using blood collected (from placentas) in sterile tubes from the labor room. I introduced frozen sections. (¹⁰p.3).

Implementation of frozen section diagnosis in hospital laboratories elsewhere in North America generally lagged behind this.^32,33 Hall became a well-known and admired pathologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton and practiced there for another 30 years. This has been addressed in detail elsewhere.³⁴

Pathology and politics at UofA

Morton Hall had been a faculty member at the UofA since his first very short stint in Edmonton in 1914–1915, but his interactions with the medical school were never easy. The roots of the Faculty of Medicine had been established by University President Henry Marshall Tory, who had first established the University in 1908. As noted earlier, Tory was the administrative head of the developing medical school until 1920, when the first dean of medicine was appointed. The first entry class for the four year medical degree matriculated in 1921. However, it is said that Tory made all important decisions for the whole University from 1908 to 1928.^8,9 In the official history of the UofA Medical School, Robert Lampard notes that: “From the outset, Dr. Tory sought and favored McGill graduates as the UofA’s senior medical teachers and clinical professors” (Lampard,⁸ p.11). This pattern was confirmed by Morton Hall, and, as a UofT graduate, it clearly irritated him.¹⁰ Furthermore, things were not about to change. According to Lampard, “Dr. Tory’s guiding hand on the faculty lasted until 1928 and could be felt through his successors for the next 30 years” (Lampard,⁸ p.45). Morton Hall provides unique insights into the early history of the UofA medical school:

From 1910 to about 1925, Alberta’s politics, social life and finances were apt to be tainted with intrigue and even skullduggery. Hospitals and university facilities all fitted into the picture. Dr. Henry Tory, the President of the University was one of the cleverest men in Alberta and in many ways was the right man for the UofA at that time. … In 1913 he set out to organize a medical faculty (I might say at this time that Dr. Tory was a McGill alumnist [sic] and he could see no quality in a graduate of any other college in Canada), so even though 48% of the doctors in Edmonton area were Toronto graduates, he had no intention of taking any of them on the faculty, but he slipped up a bit! There was actually a Toronto graduate, Dr. Heber Moshier placed in Dr. Tory’s office with instructions from the Premier [NB, from May 26, 1910 to October 30, 1917, the Premier of Alberta was Arthur Sifton (1856-1921), a UofT graduate, who had replaced Alexander Cameron Rutherford (1857-1941), a McGill graduate who shared Tory's McGill-centric beliefs related to UofA faculty], to be Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. … Dr. Tory went east and since McGill couldn’t spare a pathologist for professor of pathology he asked Moshier, - who advised him that I was at Bellevue Hospital in New York. He contacted me. I prepared credentials, resigned at Bellevue and arrived in Edmonton, August 4, 1914 to be professor of pathology. (¹⁰p.1).

Moshier was to have become dean of medicine and Hall the professor of pathology. In fact, circumstances were quickly evolving outside of Tory’s control so that most of the other UofA pre-WWI major medical school appointments would be UofT graduates as well. But the War intervened. As Hall later wrote: “Can you imagine Dr. Tory with an all Toronto medical faculty! But the war gave him his chance. Dr. Moshier was killed and from that time the medical faculty was in his charge.” (¹⁰p.1). According to Hall:

Up to 1914, the medical college employed fulltime professors for departments of anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, biology, and the instructors in the clinical departments were part-time. Lieutenant Colonel Moshier was killed in early in 1918 [NB, actually August 1918³⁵]. Dr. Tory was in London and at once he set out to revamp his medical faculty and make it an outpost of McGill. He arranged for the students in the overseas army to finish at McGill and decided to employ … fulltime heads of departments. … There were three McGill graduates who before the war were employed by the faculty of science. These included Dr. Allan Rankin, Dr. [James] Fyshe, and Dr. Hurlburt. Dr. Rankin became fulltime dean, Dr. Hurlburt [became] professor of surgery … [and Dr. Fyshe] became superintendent of the Royal Alexandra Hospital. [After describing how additional McGill graduates were hired and how Toronto graduates were dispensed with, Hall continues] … only Dr. Morton E. Hall resurfaced. In the meantime all overseas soldiers started to come back and government orders said they must be re-employed. I was the only thorn left in rearranging his McGill medical faculty and at the time I was not available, - I was still conservator of the Canadian War Museum in London, England, (¹⁰ p.1–2).

Tory solidified his control over the medical school by seizing control of the teaching hospitals and the provincial public health laboratory.⁸ Allan Coats Rankin (1877–1959), the director of the provincial laboratory (1914–1945) and a bacteriologist with war experience as a pathologist,³⁵ was appointed dean of medicine in 1920. He was a McGill graduate and served as dean until 1945; his goals were highly aligned with those of Tory.

John James Ower (1885–1962), another McGill graduate, was appointed as professor of pathology (1919–1939). By September 1919, Ower was the provincial pathologist, professor and head of pathology at UofA, and the pathologist at the Provincial Laboratory. He also provided pathology supervision to the Misericordia and Edmonton General Hospitals for the next 25 years. However, it should be noted that Provincial Laboratory provided surgical pathology services for the University Hospital and both of the Misercordia and Edmonton General Hospitals until at least 1946. According to Lampard⁸ (p.50), he was the third pathologist in Alberta. Ower was later acting dean and then dean.

When Morton Hall left Ottawa and returned to Edmonton in the Autumn of 1919, he quickly arranged a meeting with Dean Rankin and Ower. According to Hall:

They understood that I must be looked after. It was agreed that I would have a rank as an associate professor and would succeed Dr. Ower and would be second in the department of pathology. I agreed not to use my title until retirement, hence they kept their arrangement. I was to become coroners pathologist and choose the courses to give. I was to be the head pathologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and was appointed the next day with Dr. Fyshe who gave me a letter of appointment as pathologist. Dr. Ower became pathologist at the Strathcona [University] Hospital and any services for the military. It was also specifically agreed that I was not to be contacted for pathology services for the city of Edmonton, except those which would ordinarily be handled by the provincial laboratory. I agreed specifically to preserve all of the pathology specimens and material suitable for teaching purposes and if necessary to transport them to the University. I also agreed that during my tenure as pathologist, I would at times prepare the teaching facilities at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. During the following 30 years, I would say that all of the agreements were kept (,¹⁰ p.2).

While Hall was able to negotiate terms to his liking and abided by them after he returned to Edmonton, he did not believe that the overall policy to preferentially hire McGill graduates was fair and was outspoken about this. In fact, he even wrote the President of UofT. Henry John Cody (1868–1951), who served on the UofT Board of Governors from 1917 to 1932 (and as Chair from 1923-1932), as UofT President starting in 1932 and then UofT Chancellor starting in 1944, was already aware of this.³⁷ According to his biography:

Cody was constantly being worried by his staff and others about what they regarded as imperialism of Queens and McGill. He responded warmly to these warnings. In 1933 Dr. Morton E. Hall, a Toronto alumnus in Edmonton, complained that the Alberta Medical School refused posts to University of Toronto graduates: “In spite of the fact that we (Toronto) outnumber McGill and even though many are medalists of honor graduates with training equal to or better not one of these have a place on the Faculty Councils in at least two faculties (Medicine and Engineering).” His letter emphasized the fact that McGill people use only their own. Cody replied on November 29: “many thanks for your interesting letter of November 23. It supplies a clue to many things and certainly puts one on guard.” He added, “The University of Toronto is keenly interested in the welfare of her western graduates.” He promised to … carefully and diplomatically make inquiry … (Donald,³⁷ p.207).

Personal life

Morton married Miss Eva Mae Wilkinson who was born (29 April 1889) and lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They were married in her mother’s home in Minneapolis at 8 p.m. on 1 August 1911. Considerable detail about the wedding service and her attire is provided elsewhere.³⁸ They honeymooned in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Eva had been attending the University of Minnesota but apparently did not complete her degree.

During the War, Mrs. Hall lived at 2303 Dupont Ave., Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her mother.³⁹ After the War years, the Halls “starter home” in Edmonton was located at 12424 – 102 Avenue, but once Morton had established his career, they moved to a larger and more prestigious home at 12729 Stony Plain Road. Morton Hall and his wife, Eva, had different styles. She liked elegant clothing, social events, and entertaining; beginning in 1927, they hired a 26-year-old housekeeper from Scotland named Fanny, who helped with housework and the Hall’s five children (see below). Morton was just the opposite. He dressed so poorly that some of Eva’s guests would mistake him for a hardworking gardener when visiting her at their large pretentious home, complete with elegant gardens, a greenhouse and prize-winning dahlias.³⁴ Hall’s hair was always rather long and disheveled and in the early 1930s, the house staff took up a collection to pay for a haircut, an action Hall did not particularly appreciate and so he returned the favor by giving them several days of the silent treatment.³⁴ As succinctly stated by one of Hall’s hospital surgical colleagues, “tonsorial splendor was not one of his major fortes.”³⁴

Hall’s automobile was an old wreck, and had been involved in many fender benders. As a result, he more or less owned the hospital parking lot. Other doctors would try to avoid parking near him. Those with nice cars tried to arrive after him and leave before him. As a driver, he was a menace who frequently steered his car with his knees while lighting cigarettes; his car often ran out of gas or had flat tires.³⁴

Morton and Eva had four sons and one daughter: Morton Eldred Hall Jr. was born 14 July 1915 in Edmonton. Roger Montegue Hall was born 12 February 1917 in Kingston, Ontario. Frances Hall was born 26 December 1920. Charles Burnham Hall and Willard S. Hall, twins, were born 5 July 1923 in Edmonton. All of Morton’s and Eva’s children served in WWII. Morton Jr. became a surgeon, served in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corp (RCAMC) in France, and then worked with the Worker’s Compensation Board in Vancouver.⁴⁰ Roger became a radiologist and served with the RCAMC in England.⁴¹ Willard and Charles both served as fighter pilots in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII; Charlie was shot down and killed and was buried in Antwerp, Belgium.⁴² Willard, who flew a large Lancaster bomber, survived the War and went into the life insurance business.⁴³ The Hall’s only daughter Francis (Mrs. J.P. Iffrig) worked with United Nations Relief in Washington, D.C. during WWII; she was the only child to outlive their father and mother.⁴⁴

In 1929, the Halls bought a 640 acre farm near Namao, just north of Edmonton. Morton would visit the farm, but never lived there. He was apparently not a very good farmer and so he had an arrangement with a man named Foster, who operated the farm for Morton. The arrangement was that Hall could visit the farm anytime he wanted but he was not allowed to offer any advice. This arrangement, for the most part, worked. The farm was sold in 1959.³⁴

Moving to British Columbia and the end of his life

The Halls moved to Galiano Island, British Columbia, in 1951 and purchased Scoones Farm, a 60 acre chicken farm; reports on his abilities as a chicken farmer are variable.³⁴ But if his obituary is correct, their 4000 chickens produced 15,000 eggs daily for residents of Galiano and the adjacent islands.¹

Morton Hall was a recipient of the Canadian Centennial medal at Ganges in 1967; the medal was presented by Lieutenant Governor George Pearkes, V.C. He was also a recipient of the British Columbia Centennial medal in 1971. His completed Pioneer Medallion Application Form, on file with the BC Archives, provides a hint of how his paternal ancestors ended up in New Brunswick. Captain Stephen Hall (1751–1834), a United Empire Loyalist who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War, and his family travelled north to St. Stephens, NB, circa 1783, where he was given a plot of land.

Morton E. Hall died at the age of 87 on 22 October 1975 on Galiano Island. He was predeceased by his first wife Eva, who died in Vancouver on 13 August 1967. However, a few years before he died, he married Fanny, their loyal housekeeper who had served the family for almost 50 years. At the time of Morton Hall’s death, he had 11 grandchildren and six great grandchildren; he was survived by his second wife, Fanny.¹

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the University of Calgary Interlibrary Loan Service, Thomas Kryton, BFA, Charlotte Monroe, and Kristin Rogers, MLIS, Collections Curator, The Ohio State University Health Sciences Library Medical Heritage Center. We also thank Suzanne Chan, a pathologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton for her tireless efforts to try to locate a photograph of Dr. Morton Hall.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

James R Wright Jr.

Author biographies

James R Wright Jr., M.D., PhD. is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Paediatrics at the University of Calgary.

Harry Walter Vincent Letts, M.D. was a pathologist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, for 25 years. He was formerly the archivist for the Canadian Association of Pathologists and he wrote extensively on the history of pathology in Canada. Dr Letts passed away on 6 December 2018.

References

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