# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Turner, William

​TURNER, Sir WILLIAM (1832–1916), anatomist, teacher, and academic administrator, was born at Lancaster 7 January 1832. His father, also William Turner, an upholsterer and cabinet-maker, died in 1837, and the boy, with a younger brother who only lived to the age of fourteen, was left to the care of the widowed mother (née Margaret Aldren) in straitened circumstances. He was educated at a private school, which he left at the age of fifteen to be apprenticed to a local general practitioner, Dr. Christopher Johnston. In 1850, with the leave of his employer, he was freed from his apprenticeship, and allowed to complete his training in London at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. There he studied assiduously under Sir James Paget [q.v.] and other teachers, preparing himself at the same time for matriculation in London University. In 1852 he passed this examination, taking the first prize in chemistry and the second place in botany. In May 1853 he gained a scholarship at St. Bartholomew's in anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, and in the following month he obtained his diploma, after the oral examination which in those days was the only test of the ​successful completion of a professional course.
Turner was now qualified to practise, but he decided, with the help of his scholarship, to continue his studies for the London M.B. degree. In August 1854 he passed the intermediate examination, and in the following month he received from John Goodsir [q.v.], professor of anatomy in Edinburgh, the offer of the post of senior demonstrator in that department. The offer, which he owed to Paget's recommendation, was accepted; and in October, at the age of twenty-two, Turner crossed the Border for the first time, and entered the service of the university with which he was to be so closely associated for sixty-two years.
The thirteen years during which Turner worked under Goodsir were a testing-time in his career. His position was not at all secure nor altogether comfortable. He was very young and had no previous experience in teaching. He was merely Goodsir's private assistant, nominated and paid by the professor, without any direct commission from the university. He was English by birth and the product of an English school, thrust into a medical school which was at the height of its reputation and proudly confident of its superiority and its self-sufficiency. That Turner established his position and his reputation in spite of these disadvantages is a striking proof of his ability and strength of character. His industry was extraordinary, and was only equalled by the physical strength, derived apparently from the mother's side, which enabled him to work with the minimum of interruption from morning to night. Although his teaching work was very heavy, as Goodsir was not in good health, he found time to complete his London M.B. in 1857, to edit Paget's Lectures on Surgical Pathology, to produce several scientific papers, to publish his own Atlas and Handbook on Human Anatomy and Physiology (1857), and to take part in founding the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology in 1866. He also corresponded with Darwin, to whom he supplied information as to rudimentary parts in human and animal structure [see Darwin's letters in Turner's Life, pp. 186–90]. While he was thus establishing a position among men of science he was also steadily strengthening his position in the university. Nothing contributed more to this than his active part in the Volunteer movement of 1859. The improvement in his position was shown in 1861, when his demonstratorship became a university office with an additional salary from university funds (this enabled him to marry in 1863), and still more conclusively in 1867 when, on Goodsir's death, he was chosen by the curators as his successor in the chair of anatomy.
Turner's position was now secure, and all idea of returning to England was abandoned. At the same time the range of his activities was largely extended. The teaching of anatomy continued until 1903 to be his primary duty, and his eminence as a teacher is indisputable. He commanded the services of a series of efficient demonstrators, and he could point with legitimate pride to the fact that the chairs of anatomy throughout the Empire were largely filled by students who had received their early training at his hands. To the labour of teaching he added administrative and legislative work, for which he developed both taste and capacity. From the outset he was an active member of the senatus, and played a specially prominent part in all matters concerning the faculty of medicine, of which he was dean from 1878 to 1881. He was a leader in the opposition to the admission of women to medical classes, when the question was raised by Sophia Jex-Blake [q.v.]; and to the last he was an opponent of mixed classes in the study of medicine. He was the right-hand man of Sir Alexander Grant [q.v.] in collecting the large sums needed for the construction of the new medical buildings, and in organizing the great tercentenary celebration which in 1883 followed their completion. He found a congenial occupation in the equipment of the spacious accommodation now provided for the anatomical department, and especially in the arrangement and cataloguing of the museum, to which he himself made numerous and valuable contributions, notably of skulls from all parts of the world. On the death of Sir Alexander Grant, Turner became chairman of the extension committee; and in that capacity he obtained from his friend, William McEwan, a large benefaction to build the imposing hall for academic functions, which had been cut out of the original plans for want of sufficient funds. He was also active in securing the gift from Sir John Usher of an institute of public health and the establishment of a chair in that subject. When the Act of 1889 extended the functions and composition of the university court, Turner was elected by the senatus an original member of the new body, of which, as convener of the finance committee and later as principal, ​he continued to be the most prominent and influential member for the rest of his life.
Outside the university Turner played a prominent part in matters concerning the general welfare of the medical profession. He was especially active in the long controversy over the improvement of the conditions to be imposed as a qualification for professional practice. Reform was urgently needed, especially in England, but there was an acute conflict as to the direction which this reform should take. The favourite proposal of English reformers was the creation of a central examining board, with the exclusive power of conferring the licence to practise in the United Kingdom. This scheme found a powerful supporter in Robert Lowe (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke), who sat in parliament for London University and took as his model that university's system of external examination. Against this formidable champion Turner entered the lists as the advocate of the university's privilege of conferring a licence through its degree, of the higher training given by a university as opposed to the mere cramming of knowledge for examination purposes, and of the superiority of examinations in which the teachers had a share. In 1881 he was invited by Earl Spencer to sit on a royal commission which was appointed to consider the whole matter. The majority reported in favour of the single portal to the profession; but Turner, with characteristic courage, drew up a vigorous minority report in which he defended his views. An attempt to legislate on the lines of the majority report proved a failure; and the Act of 1886, which finally settled the controversy, was a virtual victory for Turner's contentions. On the General Medical Council, created in 1858 to supervise the medical register and professional education, Turner sat from 1873 to 1883 as representative of the universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. When the council was re-constituted in 1886, and each university obtained separate representation, Turner again took a seat for the university of Edinburgh and retained it till his resignation in 1905. From 1898 to 1904 he was president of the council, the first Scottish representative to hold that office.
Turner had now become a man of considerable mark. He was knighted in 1886, and received many further distinctions in subsequent years. In 1897 his friends and former pupils subscribed to present to him his portrait, which was painted by Sir George Reid, president of the Royal Scottish Academy.
In 1903, on the retirement of Sir William Muir [q.v.], the curators offered Turner the principalship of the University, to which his long services had given him a substantial claim. He accepted the offer without any misgivings, but his confidence was not shared by all his colleagues. No Englishman and no occupant of a medical chair, had previously risen to the headship of a Scottish university. Turner was over seventy years of age, and he had identified himself so completely with medical interests as to inspire a fear that the other studies of the university might suffer if more weight was thrown on to the side of a faculty which was already, to some minds, too apt to assume that the university revolved around itself. But Turner, as in his younger days, speedily disarmed his critics. His English birth was already almost forgotten, as it was discovered that in all essential qualities he was as Scottish as any native of the country. His fellow-citizens recognized his virtual naturalization by conferring upon him the freedom of the city of Edinburgh in 1908. His years he carried lightly, and to the end there was no failing of his mental powers, and very little of his physical energy. Above all he showed himself to be no one-sided specialist. He had always been a man of wide general interests, and he had cultivated these by reading and by travel. But it was a remarkable achievement that he succeeded, at an age when most men are content with what they have already learned, in mastering the business and in appreciating the needs of all departments of the university. It was a recognition of the fairness and impartiality of his administration that steps were taken in 1912, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, to obtain his portrait as a permanent possession for the university. This, as he liked to point out, was again painted by a president of the Royal Scottish Academy, Sir James Guthrie.
The thirteen years of Turner's principalship, or at any rate the first eleven of them, were a notable period of expansion in the activities of the university. This expansion was rendered possible by the foundation of the Scottish Universities Trust by Andrew Carnegie [q.v.], with the administration of which Turner was closely associated, and by a benefaction from Sir Donald Currie [q.v.] due entirely to his regard for Turner. For the material ​expansion of the university Turner can claim direct credit. The new medical buildings had relieved but had not remedied the congestion in the old college, and the problem was rendered the more difficult by its position in a crowded quarter of the city. But in 1905 the old city hospital, only a stone's throw from the college, was vacated; and Turner's cordial relations with the town council enabled the university to acquire the valuable site and buildings at a very moderate cost. Room was found there for the departments of physics and engineering, and a new chemical laboratory would have been built there but for the War. To meet the charge that nothing had hitherto been done for the arts faculty, a substantial building was acquired in Chambers Street, which ultimately housed the mathematical department. Its old quarters, where Turner had originally taught anatomy, were now made available for historical and other humane studies. There were many other changes in which Turner was a sympathetic helper rather than an originator. The arts curriculum was revolutionized by a new ordinance in 1908, when the traditional method of teaching by formal lectures was supplemented by tutorial instruction; lectureships were established not only in medical and scientific subjects but also in ancient history, geography, economic history, Indian and colonial history, mercantile law, English law, banking, and military history; professorships in bacteriology, clinical medicine, and tuberculosis were created; and finally, an agreement with the Royal Infirmary brought its surgical and medical staff into a direct connexion with the university.
In spite of his activity in academic and other administrative duties, Turner never lost interest in his own branch of science and in the kindred subject of anthropology, though the time which he could give to these studies was necessarily curtailed. He kept himself abreast of all progress in his own subjects, and from time to time he published the results of his own observations and research. Of these the most important dealt with the placentation of mammals, the comparative anatomy of sea mammals, and the craniology of man. In each of these three fields of work he did good service, clearing the ground of many fallacies and preparing the way for further advances. But while he was eminent as a man of science, as was testified by his presidency of the British Association in 1900, and by his numerous academic distinctions, it cannot be claimed that he was pre-eminent. He had none of the imagination necessary for a great pioneer. He instinctively shrank from all theories based upon inference rather than on directly provable facts; his passion was for accurate and patient observation, for careful records and measurements, rather than for original suggestions. Caution was his watchword in scientific as in academic matters. He was a collector of bricks with which other men could build rather than a builder on his own account. What made Turner memorable was not originality but his many personal merits: a manly and fearless character; a statesmanlike habit of mind which realized what could be done and the necessary method of doing it; a firm and resolute grip of everything which he undertook; great clearness of view and an equal power of expressing and enforcing his opinions; and, finally, a notable combination of geniality, which disarmed opposition and inspired affection, with a dignity which enforced respect and commanded allegiance.
Turner's last years were saddened by the European War, and all that it involved. He was intensely patriotic, and urged the enlistment of all able-bodied students and members of the staff. But the empty quadrangles and the shrunken classes, together with the enforced abandonment of his building schemes, depressed him and seemed to sap his vitality. His last illness was mercifully short. He expected to attend the university court on 13 February 1916, but this proved impossible, and he died two days later. He was buried in the Dean cemetery by the side of his wife, Agnes, the eldest daughter of Abraham Logan, of Burnhouses, Berwickshire, who had died in 1908. He left three sons, one of whom became his biographer, and two daughters. Of his two portraits, that by Sir George Reid, is in the hands of his family, and that by Sir James Guthrie hangs in the senatus hall of the university.
[A. Logan Turner, M.D., Sir William Turner: A Chapter in Medical History, 1919; private information; personal knowledge.]
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