Smith, William Ramsay (1859 - 1937)

Summary

William Ramsay Smith commenced work at the (Royal) Adelaide Hospital in 1896 and in 1899 was appointed Physician to the infectious diseases unit, city coroner, inspector of anatomy and chairman of the Central Board of Health. He retired in 1929. A person of contradictions, he was noted for the taking of Aboriginal Ancestal Remains and sending them to scientific institutions in the Northern Hemisphere. In 1930 he published Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines which was an unattributed appropriation of the work of David Unaipon.

Details

The follwing quote from 1988 Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Ramsay Smith is of interest:
"He was twice president of the anthropology section of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science and was a major contributor (with Sir Baldwin Spencer) to the section on Aborigines in the Australian Encyclopaedia (1925-26). His glass negative slides of the Aborigines at the mouth of the Murray River, the only pictorial record of that group, are housed in the Mortlock Library of South Australiana. In 1924 he published In Southern Seas (London) which is largely devoted to Aborigines. Believing that tribal Aborigines were dying out, he recorded their folklore in Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines (London, 1930). While the accuracy of this work has been questioned, his zeal for recording customs and preserving artefacts displayed the mark of a trained natural scientist."

Chronology

1913

Career position - President, Section F (Ethnology and Anthropology), Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science

Related entries

Archival resources

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

• Arthur Wilberforce Jose - Records, 1919 - 1925, A7273; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana

• William Ramsay Smith - Records, 1920 - 1929, D 5047; State Library of South Australia, Mortlock Library of South Australiana. Details

Published resources

Books

• Smith, W. Ramsay, Myths & Legends of the Australian Aboriginals (London, Bombay and Sydney: George G. Harrap, 1930), 356 + 38 plates pp. Details
• Unaipon, David: edited by Muecke, Stephen and Shoemaker, Adam, Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2006), 232 pp. Without attributing Unaipon, W. Ramsey Smith published this work in 1930. Details

Book Sections

• Elmslie, Ronald G; Nance, Susan, 'Smith, William Ramsay (1859-1937), Physician, Naturalist, Anthropologist and Civil Servant' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 11: 1891 - 1939 Nes-Smi, Geoffrey Serle, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1988), pp. 674-675. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A110689b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

• Fforde, Cressida, 'From Edinburgh University to the Ngarrindjeri nation, South Australia', Museum international, 61 (1/2) (2009), 41-7. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0033.2009.01673.x. Details
• Macdonald, Helen,, 'The Anatomy Inspector and the Government Corpse ', History Australia, 6 (2) (2009). Details

Resources

• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q7986292. Details
• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/72176391. Details
• 'Smith, W Ramsay (1859-1937)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-638406. Details

See also

• 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 250-252, 273. Details
• Serle, Percival, Dictionary of Australian biography (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1949). Details