Monkeys and Vitamin D: How the word was spread by a medical man to Cheshire in the forerunner to Chester Zoo

My story, Monkeys and Vitamin D. Pioneering science successfully applied to wild animal husbandry in the 1920s and 30s by Miss Hume, Miss Smith and Dr Lucas, from December 2021 was read by Gwyn Griffiths who then got in touch. He has been researching the history of the zoo at Shavington in Cheshire. The Zoo, long closed, is these days only remembered as the forerunner of Chester Zoo and its founder George Mottershead. Confusingly, the zoo at Shavington was called Oakfield Zoological Gardens, the same name as the house and land that Motterhead bought near Chester, twenty-odd miles away. 

One man who was in partnership with Mottershead at Shavington seems to have been written out of the histories. He was Dr William (‘Willie) Larmour English, a general practitioner from Haslington, a couple of miles away.

Gwyn Griffiths has a ledger in which English recorded events at Shavington and at his own house in Haslington. That record was saved by the doctor’s housekeeper whose relation’s daughter used some empty pages for school homework. Gwyn noticed that there are references to Miss Hume (spelt Hulme) and Dr Lucas as well as treatments for sick animals with preparations containing Vitamin D, which had come on to the market in the late 1920s, and the use of ultraviolet lamps. I have read the relevant extracts and it is clear that the good doctor was in touch with and following closely the work of Miss Hume and Miss Smith at the Lister Institute and by extension that at London Zoo by Lucas. In short, he was applying up-to-the-minute research on the effects of Vitamin D and ultraviolet radiation aimed at preventing rickets in the human population to his other great interest in life.

English noted the recovery of some animals given vitamins D and A. For example, ‘Antoinette’ a Common Marmoset: ’18 months rickety, nearly died. Saved by massive doses of radistol + radiostolium. May 31st 1931’.

I found this photograph on a family tree website
Willie (left) and Howard English

Mottershead and English parted company, it is rumoured on bad terms. It would certainly seem from English’s ledger that he was highly critical of Mottershead’s care of the animals at Shavington particularly of those transferred in a healthy condition from English’s house at Haslington to the zoo at Shavington.

The proof of the pudding, or in this case of the value of vitamin supplements and/or ultraviolet lamps, is evident from Dr English’s breeding success: Golden Lion Tamarins (Leontopithecus rosalia) four times in 1931-32 and Douroucoulis (Aotus trivirgatus) in 1933. In a paper to the Zoological Society of London he noted that the animals had been given Vitamin D.

In a previous note here, I pointed out the additional requirements for Vitamin D of New World Monkeys over and above those of other primates. I would guess that Dr English, with his success of breeding these species and in bringing rachitic marmosets back from the brink (his own as well as a pet of a woman in Chesjhire), was using pretty hefty doses of the Vitamin D preparations. Douroucoulis are interesting in that they are nocturnal. It seems likely therefore that even in the wild these creatures of the night must rely on dietary sources of Vitamin D.

Dr Willie English was William Larmour English. He was born on 16 February 1887 in Lurgan, County Armagh, in what is now Northern Ireland, and educated at Campbell College, Belfast. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with the usual medical degrees of that institution, MB, BCh, BAO, in 1911. He was in practice in Lurgan in 1915 but in 1917 joined the Royal Army Medical Corps; he was a commissioned on 19 July 1917, a few days before another medical man with zoological interests, Burgess Barnett. By the middle of August he was serving in East Africa. The 1921 Census shows he was a Resident Medical Officer at the City Hospital in West Derby, Liverpool. In 1923, judging from the reported length of service of his housekeeper, he was in medical practice in Haslington where one of his partners was his younger brother, Howard.

The 1939 Register (an emergency census in preparation for war) shows just two residents at his house in High Street, Haslington, English himself, a single man, and his housekeeper, Ida Ellen Louise Pye, born 11 November 1886. She the housekeeper who saved the ledger of happenings at Shavington and in his own collection.

Willie English died in 1945 aged 58. The Nantwich Chronicle and the Crewe Chronicle of Saturday 22 December gave the story. He was found dead in bed on Tuesday 18 December. Louise Pye who had been his housekeeper for 22 years reported to the inquest held on 20th that he had not seemed well and returned from visiting patients complaining of a pain between his shoulders. On taking him a cup of tea the next morning she found him dead. Examination post mortem showed he had died of natural causes. At his funeral on Friday 21, his services in the village were remembered, with obvious great appreciation and affection, in a packed parish church.

But Willie English had not quite finished. In 1947, the William Larmour English Charity was established. Still extant in 2023 its purpose is: Financial assistance towards the cost of holidays or short breaks, for those deemed to be in need or to be worthy causes by the doctors in the Haslington Surgery or by the Trustees.

Nowhere in the memorials to Willie English were his zoological interests and successes mentioned. He was a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and was I suspect a part the reason for the bit of zoo folklore from the middle decades of the 20th century that can be summed up as, ‘Vets were alright for animals with hooves, not bad for those with paws, but for monkeys you need a medical doctor’. The frightening thing was that my old veterinary colleagues who trained in the first half of the 20th century agreed.

…and I hope Gwyn Griffiths will publish more on his researches into the zoo at Shavington and on the contents of Dr English’s ledger.

English WL. 1934. Notes on the breeding of a Douroucouli (Aotus trivirgatus) in captivity. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1934 (new volume numbering 104), 143-144.