FERDINAND WILLIAM HUTCHISON

Ferdinand William Hutchison* was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1819, the son of George Hutchison, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Sometime prior to 1850 he went to Tasmania as a doctor on an immigrant ship.

Dr. Hutchison arrived in the Islands in 1850 and in May of that year was issued a license to practice and established himself at Lahaina, Maui. In the smallpox epidemic of 1853 Dr. Hutchison and Dr. James Dow worked valiantly to vaccinate the people of Maui. Leaving in May, 1857, the doctor made a trip to England and was gone for nine months. In February, 1860, Dr. Hutchison was appointed Circuit Judge for Maui, a position he held until May, 1864, when he resigned. In 1861 he became interested in establishing the Lahaina Sugar Mill, a project to which he gave considerable time. The following year (September, 1862) he was appointed a member of the Sanitary Commission which, in addition to its obvious duties, was to investigate the causes of depopulation.

When King Kamehameha V came to the throne on 1863, Dr. Hutchison became court physician and in 1865 was appointed Minister of the Interior by His Majesty. Like all office holders the doctor had his critics, and in an abrasive letter appearing in the "Hawaiian Gazette" of November 24, 1866, he was accused of not knowing the duties of his office, and it further suggested that he resign and begin a course of instruction in one of the public schools where a few months would enable him to "write passable grammar when he entertains the public with letters and to spell the name of his clerk correctly." However, he weathered the storm and held his position until 1873. He also served as president of the Board of Health from 1868 to 1873. One of the doctor's concerns was leprosy, and he is reputed to have been instrumental in selecting Kalaupapa on Molokai as the site for the Leper Settlement. In 1873 Dr. Hutchison returned to Maui and became government physician there.

Mark Twain in "Letters from Hawaii" described Minister (of the Interior) Hutchison as follows:

He has sandy hair, sandy mustache, sandy complexion --- and is altogether one of the sandiest men I ever saw, so to speak: is a tall, stoop-shouldered, middle-aged, lowering-brow, intense-eyed, irascible man, and looks like he might have his little prejudices and partialities. He has got one good point, however --- he don't talk.

Sometime in 1875 Dr. Hutchison left the Islands and went to Australia. For the next 18 years he lived in the states of Queensland (where in 1887 he was reported to have gone into the bush and not been heard of for several months), Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales. Dr. Hutchison died in Leichhardt, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, on May 20, 1893, at the age of 74. He was an Episcopalian.

From a copy of the doctor's death certificate on file in the Archives of Hawaii, it appears that he was married three times. His first wife was Malie Moa, a woman of pure Hawaiian ancestry whom he met while on Maui. She was the mother of his only children: Christina, William Kalewalani, Ambrose, and a daughter who died in infancy in Lahaina. After his first wife's death, Dr. Hutchison married Ann Sturgess in Pembroke, England (no date). A third wife is mentioned but no name or date of marriage is given. At the time of his death he was survived by his three children, and his daughter Christina was with him at the time of his death. His son Ambrose eventually contracted leprosy, and died in the same establishment his father helped erect.

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* The correct spelling is Hutchison, but more often than not it was spelled Hutchinson in newspapers and even on official documents.

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