Bram Stoker

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B. 31 October 1851 at Artane Lodge, Fairview, Dublin, Ireland

D. 14 June 1931 at Duncan, British Columbia, Canada

 

Educated at Rathmines School, Dublin,

licensed by Kings and Queens College of Physicians, Dublin, Ireland.

In July 1873, was licensed to practice surgery by the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland.

Married Susan Harden of Raheny, Dublin 1875

 

Richard Nugent Stoker, A Family Perspective

 

Like Tom and their younger brother George, Dick had a lifelong love of nature and the outdoors, inspired in large part by Charles Benson, Rathmines School’s founder and headmaster—a keen naturalist, and married to Susan Stoker’s oldest sister, Fanny.

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Dick entered the Indian Medical Service as a Surgeon in September 1874. He served in the Afghan campaign, after which he was appointed Garrison Surgeon of Fort Attock, a post he held until his promotion to Surgeon Major in 1886, when he was posted to one of the newly raised Gurkha battalions. The Sikkim campaign of 1888 took him to the North East Frontier of India and the forcing of the Jelapla Pass. 

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Through steady promotions, Dick became Surgeon Lieutenant Colonel in 1894, six years before his retirement.   

Dick preferred the more secluded outposts where he was free to hunt and fish, and had the time to record what he took. He collected specimens, which he preserved, packed, and sent to back to ‘civilization’ for documentation. Dick’s letters and charts detailing “exact measurements and weights,” feather descriptions, and habitats of birds he shot near Attock were published in Stray Feathers: Journal of Ornithology for India and its Dependencies, Vol 10, 1887, edited by Allan Hume, ornithological expert, later turned botanist, and founding father of the Indian National Congress. 

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A collection of Dick’s sketches and paintings reveals an artist’s hand with an Irish sense of humor. He labeled his work casually: “A grass cricket half painted, for he would not stay quiet,” “Cockroaches, they are very common in the houses,” “Lots of these beetles on the roads,” “ Flying bug of some sort,” “Such a noise as this bee makes: Green in the body is beautiful. I cannot put it in.”

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It was Dick and Susan’s plan to relocate to Tasmania after his retirement, but while traveling, they fell in love with the wilderness of British Columbia, Canada, and bought acreage on Vancouver Island. The area had become popular with the Anglo-Indian military officers and civil servants—travel writers and word of mouth between friends extolled the area’s climate, scenery, and relaxed yet polite way of life. The Stokers returned to stay in 1900, spending the long Canadian winters in a comfortable, two-story, white clapboard house they built in Maple Bay, and the summers in a log cabin on Lake Cowichan, where Dick continued to hunt and fish, and where they both worked to establish a vast, naturally landscaped rhododendron garden—the genesis for Finnerty Gardens, a part of the University of Victoria.

 

      W. Parker Stoker 2018