Dr John Clague
Title: Dr
Epithet: Physician, surgeon and collector of Manx music (1842-1908)
Record type: Biographies
Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):
The Doctor
A cousin, Parson Harrison, paid the young John Clague's fees at King William's College in the hope that he would take Holy Orders. However, it was already John's ambition to enter the medical profession. In his book Manx Reminiscences,he later recorded: 'William Duke was a shoemaker by trade and he lived at Ballagarmin. He was highly instructed in herbs, and he had names for all the common herbs of the field ... when I was a little boy he used to bring me herbs of every kind, and ask me if I knew what they were. It was his stories, and charms, that first put into my mind the desire to be a doctor.'
He was to work for a number of years on his father's farm before going to Guy's Hospital in October 1868, when he was 26, and then it was the result of an accident on the farm in which a young man broke his leg.
Clague set the bone and the next day went for his friend, William Clucas, The Strang, one of a family all of whom were bonesetters of great repute. Clucas advised Henry Clague to send his son as a student to Guy's Hospital. Somehow his father raised the money and, John says, 'I went the same week as the young man was getting out of bed'.
The doctors at Guy's had broken with the past and based their teaching on careful observation of patients. They would have taught Clague how to diagnose disease and how his patients would progress, and that while he could not effect a cure most of them would recover naturally. He learnt, also, that he could help them recover by arranging for good nursing, nourishing food and adequate rest, and by easing pain and other symptoms such as coughs.
He was a successful student, being First Prizeman and Exhibitioner in 1870. He qualified as a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1872 and LRCP, MRCS in 1873.
He returned to the Island and set up in practice in a loft on his father's farm. It was here, according to the In Memoriam in The Barrovian (March 1921), that he established his reputation 'by his skilful treatment of a stranger who, when driving a vehicle on the high road to Ballanorris, was suddenly taken ill and was carried to a stable loft where he lay in acute pain, suffering , as young Clague, who fortunately was on the spot, diagnosed, from strangulated hernia, which he successfully reduced without anything in the nature of an operation. The report of what he had accomplished ran like wildfire through the neighbourhood'.
After his marriage in 1873, Clague moved to Castletown and practised from Bank Street. There are many tales of his kindness. He did not charge the poor and, after delivering a Mrs Quayle, he sat up all night with her, holding her hand and, as she told her daughter later, willing her to live.
The rural Manx still clung to superstitions long since discarded elsewhere. These included the belief that illnesses were caused by supernatural means and could be cured by charms. A number of country folk set themselves up as healers making use of native herbs and charms. Dr Clague called them 'charmers' and worked happily alongside them.
Disease was prevalent; during 1880 487 children died on the Isle of Man before reaching their fifteenth birthday. There was plenty of work for both groups, and as both depended largely on the degree of hope and faith they engendered, the charmers' treatments will often have been as successful as that of the doctors. Dr Clague wrote, 'The charm works by faith. As a man thinks in his heart so is he. Anything that will make the mind peaceful will heal. The charm will not work, if it will not give peace to the mind. Fear is a cause of disease, and it will make every disease worse.'
The role that bacteria play in disease was becoming understood and operations were being performed at Guy's Hospital under Lister's antiseptic spray while Clague was a medical student, but he appears to have been a reluctant operator. Surgery was resorted to only when the situation was desperate; death often followed and, as likely as not, the surgeon was blamed. Shortly before he died Clague gave the House Surgeon at Noble's Hospital this advice: 'Ask the relatives', he said. 'If they say "cut", cut; if they say, "don't cut", don't cut'.
Clague's pre-eminence as a doctor was recognised by his appointment as surgeon to the household of the Governor in 1888.
During 1901 he fell seriously ill. He reduced his work load and spent much of his time writing Manx Reminiscences, which was published after his death in 1908.
Described as 'a Manxman from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet', John Clague was accorded a real Manx funeral. His coffin was carried by a succession of bearers to the Castletown boundary, then taken in a hearse to the outskirts of Ballabeg, followed by 30 carriages and a multitude on foot. Thence bearers carried it to Arbory Church, while those following sang hymns. A white headstone marks Dr Clague's grave, and in 1915 a tower was added to the church as a mark of respect. His memorial on the wall inside is lit by the sunlight coming through a stained glass window opposite. The window depicts Holman Hunt's 'The Light of the World' and on his memorial Clague is described as 'a beloved physician'. His epitaph, Hie eh mygeart jannoo mie, translates as 'He went about doing good'.
The Musician
William Duke's stories and experiences fired the young John Clague's interest in music and folklife as well as healing. Duke, himself an energetic amateur musician, came from a family active in the music-making of Castletown. He encouraged Clague to note down stories and songs and these formed the basis of what was to become the most important assemblage of Manx traditional music. Clague was well placed to make such a collection, welcomed as he was into the homes of large num bers of town and country people alike. Most other collectors found themselves in less relaxed situations where their informants were on guard in the presence of strangers.
The three notebooks presented to the Manx Museum by Archdeacon John Kewley contain a wide range of styles, including hymns, carvals, dance tunes and ballads. They date from the early 1890s. The contents of the second notebook are almost certainly field notes, containing first verses of ballads along with the tunes. The items seem to have been assembled at random, with no attempt at sorting into types, although they are preceded by an index, probably compiled at a later date by Edmund Evans Greaves Goodwin. Many of the contributors are identified, particularly the remarkable Thomas Kermode (Boy Doal), whose songs make up about ten per cent of the total. Most of the other singers were men, some of them related to or closely connected with Clague himself. The occupations of several are listed: mason, quarryman, coachman, surveyor of roads, parish clerk, painter, and Boy Doal himself, the blind fisherman.
Dr Clague's friendship with the Gill brothers, W.H. and Deemster J.F., dated from schooldays and was founded on a mutual love of all things Manx. When they decided to publish some of the songs, William Henry Gill took on the role of editor, marrying old tunes with non-Manx poems and sometimes commissioning new texts from writers such as AP. Graves, father of Robert, who also had a keen interest in Manx music. The intention was to popularise the tunes, reintroducing them into the lives of Manx people in the full knowledge that they had been heavily edited and, in many cases, changed almost beyond recognition. This approach was typical of the late nineteenth century but the publication of Manx National Songs in 1896 (see under W.H. Gill) met with a mixed reception, being heavily criticised in the Press, especially when compared with Arthur William Moore's 'Manx Ballads and Music', published in the same year. Perhaps this disheartened him, but for whatever reason, Dr Clague seems to have abandoned his quest for Manx music at this point. It is perhaps an irony that, while Gill's volume remained in print for a century, Moore's publication is virtually unknown except to enthusiasts.
However there is absolutely no doubt that without Dr Clague's painstaking work, Manx music today would be infinitely poorer. It is, by any standards, an extraordinary achievement and a worthy memorial to a remarkable man.
Biography written by Guy Pantin.
(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.85-8.)
Culture Vannin
#NMW
Nationality: Manx
Gender: Male
Date of birth: 10 October 1842
Date of death: 23 August 1908
Name Variant: MRCS Clague