Stirling, Edward Charles (Ted) (1848 - 1919)

Summary

Edward Stirling trained and worked as medical practitioner in the United Kingdom before returning to South Australia in 1881. He joined the University of Adelaide as Lecturer in physiology, ultimately becoming the University's first Professor of Physiology from 1900 to 1919 and serving on the Council for nearly 40 years. His interest in the natural history of South Australia led to his participation in expeditions into the inland regions, first in 1890 from Port Darwin to Adelaide. In 1893, with A. H. C. Zeitz, Stirling investigated the fossil deposits at Lake Callabonna. The following year he was medical officer and anthropologist with the Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition. On these trips Stirling made considerable collections of zoological and ethnographic material, from which he published descriptions of unknown species of animals, and reconstructed a skeleton of the extinct Diprotodon australis. Stirling's connection with the South Australian Institute began in 1884 when he became Chairman of the managing Committee. For 25 years from 1889 he was Director of the Institute's museum, often in an honorary capacity, followed by a further five years as Honorary Curator of Ethnology from 1914 to 1919. He served one term in the South Australian Legislative Assembly where, in 1886, he introduced a Bill for women's suffrage.

Details

Chronology

1870

Education - Bachelor of Arts (BA) (with honours in natural history), University of Cambridge

1873

Education - Master of Arts (MA), University of Cambridge

1874

Education - Bachelor of Medicine (MB), University of Cambridge

1874 - 1919

Career position - Fellow, Royal College of Surgeons, London

1880

Education - Doctor of Medicine (MD), University of Cambridge

1881 - 1919

Career position - Member of Council, University of Adelaide

1882 - 1900

Career position - Lecturer in Physiology, University of Adelaide

1884 - 1885

Career position - Chairman, South Australian Institute Committee

1884 - 1887

Career position - Member for North Adelaide, South Australian Legislative Assembly

1884 - 1912

Career position - Director, South Australian Institute

1888

Career event - Original [founding] member, Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

1888 - 1889

Career position - President, South Australian Branch, British Medical Association

1888 - 1889

Career position - President, Royal Society of South Australia

1889

Career position - Inaugural President, Adelaide Medical Students' Society

1893

Award - Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George CMG

1893 - 1919

Award - Fellow, The Royal Society, London (FRS)

May 1894 - August 1894

Career position - Medical officer and anthropologist, Horn Scientific Exploring Expedition

1895 - 1913

Career position - Director, South Australian Institute

1900 - 1919

Career position - Professor of Physiology, University of Adelaide

1905

Career position - President, Australasian Medical Congress, Adelaide

1908 - 1917

Career position - Dean, Faculty of Medicine, University of Adelaide

1910

Education - Doctor of Science (ScD), University of Cambridge

1912 - 1914

Career position - Member of organising committee, British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting

1913 - 1914

Career position - Honorary Director, South Australian Institute

1914

Career position - Vice-President, Sections H (Anthropology) and I (Physiology), British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting

1914 - 1919

Career position - Honorary Curator of Ethnology, South Australian Institute

1916 - 1919

Career position - President, Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, South Australia

1917

Award - Knight Bachelor (Kt) - Professor of Physiology at Adelaide University

Related entries

Archival resources

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• Baldwin Spencer - Records, 1880 - 1929, ML MSS 29; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

Private hands (Robertson, D.S.)

• Edward Charles Stirling - Records, 1848 - 1919; Private hands (Robertson, D.S.). Details

South Australian Museum Archives

• Edward Charles Stirling - Records, 1870 - 1906, A.D. 43; South Australian Museum Archives. Details

Published resources

Books

• Stirling, E. C.; Haake, J. W.; and Beazley, Geo, Directions for collecting and preserving specimens of natural history (Adelaide: Government Printer, 1882), 8 pp. Details

Book Sections

• Gandevia, Bryan, 'The Sir Edward Stirling Memorial Lecture: Reflections of Stirling's Presidential Addresses, and on Medical Historiography in South Australia' in Occasional Papers on Medical History Australia, Harold Attwood; Frank Forster and Bryan Gandevia, eds (Parkville: Medical History Society, A.M.A. [Victoria Branch] and Medical History Unit, University of Melbourne, 1984), pp. 59-84. Details
• Mincham, Hans, 'Stirling, Sir Edward Charles (1848-1919), surgeon, scientist and politician' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 6: 1851 - 1890 R - Z, Bede Nairn, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1976), pp. 200-201. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060217b.htm. Details
• Turnbull, P., 'A judicious collector: Edward Charles Stirling and the procurement of Aboriginal boodily remains in South Australia, c. 1880 - 1912' in The body divided: human beings and human "material" in modern medical history, Ferber, S.; and Wilde, S., eds (Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2011), p. 22. Details

Edited Books

• Spencer, Baldwin ed., Report on the work of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, 4 vols (London: Melbourne: Dulau and Co.: Melville, Mullen and Slade, 1896). Details

Journal Articles

• K., C. H., 'Sir E. C. Stirling, C.M.G., F.R.S.', Nature, 103 (2579) (1919), 87-8. Details
• Last, Peter, 'The founder of the Adelaide Medical School', Adelaide Medical Students’ Society review (1949), 7-21. Details
• Stirling, E. C., 'On a new Australian mammal', Report of the first meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 1 (1889), 349-351, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/15813439. Details
• Stirling, E. C., 'Reconstruction of Diprotodon australis from the Callabonna deposits, South Australia', Nature, 76 (1907), 543-4. Details
• Stirling, E. C., 'Preliminary report on the discovery of native remains at Swanport, Murray River; with an inquiry into the alleged occurrence of a pandemic among the Australian Aboriginals', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 35 (1911), 4-46, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/36830746. Details
• Stirling, E. C. and Zietz, A. H. C., 'Genyornis newtoni, a fossil struthious bird from lake Callabonna, South Australia: with description of the bones of the leg and foot', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 20 (2) (1896), 191-210, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26249714. Details
• Stirling, E. C.; and Zeitz, A., 'Vertebrata [of the Elder Scientific Exploring Expedition]', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 16 (1893), 154-76, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/35803610. Details
• Stirling, E. C.; illustrated by Rosa Fiveash, 'Description of a new genus an species of marsupial mouse "Notoryctes typhlops"', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 14 (1891), 154-87, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/26249221. Details
• Turnbull, Paul, 'Australian museums, Aboriginal skeletal remains, and the imagining of human evolutionary history', Museum & society, 13 (1) (2015), 72-87. https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v13i1.318. Pages 80, 81. Details
• Verco, J. C., 'Sir Edward Stirling, Kt, CMG, FRS, MA, MD, FRCS, CMZS. A Note of Appreciation', Medical Journal of Australia, 1 (1919), 298-299. Details
• Verco, Jos. C., 'Obituary notice: (Sir E. C. Stirling)', Transactions and proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, 43 (1919), 1-4. Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5342269. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/92044242. Details
• 'Stirling, E C (18480908-19190320)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-498056. Details

See also

• Ferber, Sarah and Wilde, Sally eds, The Body Divided: Human Beings and Human 'Material' in Modern Medical History (Farnham (U.K.): Ashgate, 2011), 264 pp. Details
• Hale, H. M., 'The First Hundred Years of the Museum, 1856-1956', Records of the South Australian Museum, 12 (1956), 1-225. Details
• Nettelbeck, Amanda (and others), The Overland Telegraph Line: A Transcultural History, [web resource; undated], South Australian Government, South Australia, 2023. https://otlhistory.sa.gov.au/. Details
• Pybus, Cassandra, A very secret trade: the dark story of gentlemen collectors in Tasmania (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2024), 318 pp. https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Cassandra-Pybus-Very-Secret-Trade-9781761066344. Pages 239. Details
• Reed, E.H. and Bourne, S. J., 'Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 124 (1) (2000), 61-90. Details
• Reed, Elizabeth, 'Naracoorte Caves: a critical window of faunal extinctions and past climates' in Proceedings of the 31st conference of the Australian Speleological Federation - the darkness beneath (Australian Speleological Federation, 2019), pp. 12-9. http://st1.asflib.net/JNS/AUNat/ASF/ASF-ConfProc/ASFConfProcs31.html. Details
• Reed, Liz and Bourne, Steve, '"Old" cave, new stories: the interpretative evolution of Blanche Cave, Naracoorte', Journal of the Australasian Cave and Karst Management Association, 90 (2013), 11-28. https://ackma.org/journal/90/'Old'%20Cave%20New%20Stories%20The%20Interpretative%20Evolution%20Of%20Blanche%20Cave%20Naracoorte%20South%20Australia%20-%20Liz%20Reed%20and%20Steve%20Bourne.pdf. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details
• Turner, N. K. and Reed, E. H., 'Using historical research to constrain the provenance and age of the first recorded collection of extinct Pleistocene large mammal fossils from the Naracoorte Caves, South Australia', Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, 147 (1) (2023), 143-59, https://doi.org/10.1080/03721426.2023.2188442. Details