INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF VETERINARY AND ANIMAL MEDICINE (ISSN:2517-7362)

Waldo Hearne Glanville was born in Dublin (Ireland) in 1904. He spent his early years with his family making one journey to Canada to visit his brother in 1925 when he was a veterinary student. He graduated a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine in Dublin and was admitted as a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons on 21 July 1927. He arrived in Sudan a year later on 28 November 1928 and took up his position as Veterinary Inspector and was initially posted to Kassala in the east of the country. Glanville served in Halfa Province in the extreme north of Sudan during 1930 and part of 1931. Upper Nile Province in the south was his next posting where he served until 1934. Posted to Khartoum at the beginning of 1935 he remained there until the middle of 1941. From early 1939 until mid 1941 he doubled his general work as Registrar (Principal) of the newly established veterinary school and was promoted to the newly established cadre of Senior Veterinary Inspector just before the end of this period. He then spent almost two years as Senior Veterinary Inspector in Kordofan Province in the west of the country before returning to Khartoum as Director Designate at the beginning of 1944. Glanville was awarded the Order of the Nile, Fourth Class for his services by the King of Egypt concurrently with being appointed Director towards the end of 1944. During this World War II period he also served in the Sudan Defence Force as a Major. In this last capacity he was given an emergency commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the British Forces in February 1944, he appointment being rescinded in September 1949. Glanville retired as Director in September 1952 and spent his remaining years quietly, attending occasional conferences and writing papers.

Animal diseases; Livestock exports, Veterinary education; Anti-rinderpest vaccine; Animal trypanosomosis

A Sudanese nationalist group wrenched power from Egypt in 1885 and ruled the country until 1898 [1,2]. A Condominium was established between Great Britain and Egypt following the reconquest of Sudan by British and Egyptian armed forces. The initial concern of the veterinary service established in 1902 was the health of the thousands of cavalry, pack and transport animals required to rule the country [3]. Early Principal Veterinary Offices/Directors of Veterinary Service were officers of the British Army Veterinary Corps seconded to the Egyptian Army. In 1924, however, the British War Office decided to stop seconding officers to Egypt. Some already in Sudan resigned their commissions to be immediately employed by the Sudan Defence Force which meant that Directors were still serving military officers. By this time the emphasis of veterinary work had moved away from transport to meat- and milk-producing livestock and prophylactic and curative treatments for production diseases were sought and applied. The export trade also became of considerable importance as a means of earning foreign exchange [4,5].

Waldo Hearne Glanville was the eleventh of the twelve men who were expatriate directors of the Sudan Veterinary Services of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium between 1899 to the end of 1955 but the first who had no military background on his initial appointment. Glanville served as Veterinary Inspector, Senior Veterinary Inspector and Director of Veterinary Services for 24 years from 1928 to 1952. 

Waldo Hearne Glanville was born, the tenth child of 12 sired by his father, on 8 November 1904 at Ben-Inagh, Rock Road, Dublin, Ireland (Figure 1), the son of an elderly father Edward Samuel Glanville (born 16 August 1844 in Walkerstown, Kilkenny West) and his much younger second wife Selina Agnes Vance (born 4 September 1864 in Bandon). Waldo’s birth was registered in the Rathdown Registration District [6].

At the census of Ireland taken on Sunday 11 April 1911 Waldo Hearne Glanville was 6 years old and living with his parent and siblings at House 2, Rock Road in Blackrock Number 1 in Dublin [7]. His father was a Marble Merchant aged 66, his mother was aged 46 and had been married for 19 years, and had borne 7 children (there were 8 in the household as the eldest was Glanville senior’s daughter by a previous marriage)¹ . All five children older than Waldo could read and write, he could read whereas the younger siblings could do neither. The family was unusual in that it followed the Methodist faith which comprised only 1.4% of the Irish population of 4.4 million² .

Waldo spent the early years of his life with his parents and several of his siblings. The family kept a pet donkey in the grounds of their large house which was ridden bareback by Waldo: it was perhaps from this early beginning that Waldo developed his life-long love (as indeed is the case for many vets) of all things equine and especially riding and racing³ . In his teens, however, and faithful to his family religious beliefs, he was a pupil at the well-known and well-respected Wesley College, a Methodist foundation in the Balanteer suburb of Dublin4 . At school he received letters (Appendix A) from his older brother Arthur who had joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers early in 1917 and who had been wounded and captured by the German enemy and who also sent him a drawing of the dugout in which Arthur’s unit sheltered from artillery barrage (Figure 2). Waldo was obviously s diligent scholar as in one postcard from his brother he is congratulated for winning a prize (Figure 3) [9,10].

The 2^nd Blackrock Boy Scout troop was established in 1911. Waldo and at least some of his brothers were founder members and in 1915, aged 10, Waldo became the youngest ever King’s Scout5 . By 1923 many of the boys were in their late teens and a 1^st  Stilloran Rover (boys over 18 years of age) Troop [11] was formed in December 1923. Eight members of this Troop took part in the first week of August 1924 in the Imperial Jamboree Camp at Wembley as members of the [Irish] Free State contingent. One of the eight was Waldo Hearne and another was his younger brother Robert Ranulf (their older brother Edward George was the District Scoutmaster) (Figure 4). Waldo’s role at the Jamboree was Officer Commanding Knots. The Glanville brothers won the half-mile relay sports event. Early in 1925 Waldo took the Parade service at the Easter camp with seven members of the Stillorgan Troop present [11].

Later in 1925 Waldo Glanville aged 20 sailed from Southampton to Quebec, where he arrived on board the RMS Antonia on 11 July with fifty dollars in his possession. His nationality was listed as Irish, his father paid for his passage and the purpose of his voyage was to visit his brother Eric Vance Glanville although his first address was the Neptune Hotel in Quebec [12]^6,7.

Glanville graduated from University College Dublin in 1927 with a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (MVB) degree and was registered as a Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (MRCVS) on 21 July 1927 [13].