Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
NamePhilip Henry George GOSSE MD MRCSC LRCP, 9236
Birth1879
Death1959
FatherSir Edmund William GOSSE CB , 9237 (1849-1928)
MotherEllen EPPS , 9238 (1850-1929)
Spouses
Birth1898
FatherLt Col Oliver HAWKSHAWE , 9230 (1869-1949)
MotherRuth Stewart HODGSON , 9231 (1872-1924)
Marriage1930
Notes for Philip Henry George GOSSE MD MRCSC LRCP


Philip Henry George Gosse was born on 13 August 1879, the only son of Sir Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) and Ellen Epps (1850-1929). Philip had one sister by that union, (Laura) Sylvia Gosse. Philip was first educated at Haileybury College and then entered an agricultural college in Lincolnshire, and he was in the Edward Fitzgerald expedition to the Andes as a naturalist in 1896-97. Soon after his return he was sent to Cambridge by his father, and read medicine at Trinity College, going on to St. Bartolomew’s Hospital to receive his clinical training. He qualified M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. in 1907, and in 1923 received his M.D. at Durham University. He held the appointment of house-surgeon at the Essex County Hospital, Colchester, and then entered general practice in a village in the New Forest. During WWI he served with the R. A. M.C. in France and India. After the war he was a medical referee in the Ministry of Pensions, and, later medical superintendent of the Radium Institute, London, from which post he retired in 1930.

Gosse was a man of multifarious interests, and he is credited with saying that he had "failed in life" because he had too many interests and that he cultivated a new hobby every few years. He made his mark as a naturalist, and as a historian he published several volumes. In 1939 his collection of books on pirates and piracy was presented by an anonymous donor to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. In 1889 Gosse published Notes on the Natural History of the Aconcagua Valley, and subsequent works Birds of the Balearic Islands and Mammals of Flanders, and a biography of Charles Waterton , the naturalist, entitled The Squire of Walton Hall. He produced The Pirates’ Who’s Who in 1924, 'My Pirate Library' in 1926, and 'The History of Piracy' in 1932. A widower, he was three times married: to Gertrude Agnes Gosse Hay 1872, Irene Ruth Hawkshaw 1898, and Anna Gordon Keown 1896, with one daughter of the first marriage, one daughter of the second marriage, but no children of the third marriage.

He had confessed that medicine had not been of his choosing. His grand father had been also named Philip Henry Grosse, the naturalist, and thus his interests was in the study of birds and animals, and also in his writings. He had a host of friends in the U.K. and all over the world with whom he conducted a large correspondence with wit and enthusiasm. He will be remembered for his interest in the Fountain Club, a dining club of old Bart’s men, of which he was one of the founders, and was responsible for its conduct over many years. He remained young in heart and mind, and was active to the end, which came with a sudden illness which overwhelmed him in several days.
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