Stewart Stockman: Britain's Chief Veterinary Officer from Transvaal to Weybridge

Who was Stewart Stockman?

Stewart Stockman was born on 27 September 1869 in Leith, Edinburgh, the fourth son of a flour importer, William John Stockman. His brother Ralph became a noted physician. He attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh, studied veterinary science at the Royal Veterinary College in Edinburgh, and did postgraduate work in animal pathology in Paris and Brussels, details from a biographical reference page.

The public record on Stockman is thinner than for many of his contemporaries, so this profile limits itself to the career milestones that sources state and to the official record of his office.

From Edinburgh to the Transvaal

Stockman returned to Edinburgh in 1892 as Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology at the Royal Veterinary College, a post he held for seven years. In 1899 he left Scotland for the Second Boer War. After the war he worked in India, and in 1903 he became Chief Veterinary Officer to the Transvaal, where he concentrated on cattle diseases and tropical diseases.

That posting put him in the same country where Arnold Theiler was building South Africa's veterinary service, in a period when rinderpest and tick-borne fevers dominated cattle losses.

Chief Veterinary Officer in Britain

In 1905 Stockman became Chief Veterinary Officer to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries and directed its research laboratory at Weybridge. In 1926 Lord Bledisloe told the House of Lords that Stockman had been Chief Veterinary Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture for the past 21 years, as the Hansard record of the debate shows.

His notable achievements, according to the reference page, included eliminating glanders from Great Britain and creating the Tuberculosis Order of 1925, which aimed to stop bovine tuberculosis spreading to humans through milk.

Foot-and-mouth disease and the final weeks

Stockman is described as an expert on foot-and-mouth disease, and his death came during a Lords debate on the subject. The disease had reappeared in Scotland on 22 May 1926 after two years free of it. The Ministry had issued Hay and Straw Packing Orders and had just issued the Importation of Carcases (Prohibition) Order, 1926, banning carcase imports from continental Europe.

The debate also noted that Sir William Leishman, chairman of the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Investigation Committee, had died. Bledisloe called the loss of Stockman a very serious one for his department. The Hansard text does not set out Stockman's own views on policy, and we do not guess them. Nature's one-page notice of his death, available as a PDF, adds little beyond the announcement.

Honors, family and death

King George V knighted Stockman on 1 January 1913. He served as President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for 1923/24 and as President of the National Veterinary Association. In 1908 he married Ethel McFadyean, daughter of Sir John McFadyean, the Royal Veterinary College principal, and they had two daughters.

He died on 2 June 1926 at his brother Ralph's home in Glasgow.

Why Stockman matters to cattle people

British cattle keepers still live with the system Stockman worked in: a government chief vet, a research laboratory at Weybridge, and orders that restrict movements when disease appears. For more on animal health and ranching history, see farm.FM's ranching section and a farm.FM story about foot-and-mouth in cattle.