GEORGE T. SHIPLEY

Dr. George T. Shipley, born in Boston, Massachusetts, and a former surgeon in the U.S. Navy, arrived in Honolulu aboard the "Idaho" February 1, 1869. On July 15, 1869, he was married to Mrs. Mary Virginia Rosalie Fuller in Honolulu, and in October the doctor and his bride left the Islands.

Returning on the "Ajax" May 19, 1870, with his wife and baby, Dr. Shipley settled in Honolulu and opened an office on Fort Street. The following January the doctor went to the Mainland to be gone until April 4, 1871, when he returned and resumed his practice at his residence on Fort and Chaplain Streets. His business card advertising his Honolulu office appeared for the last time in the September 30, 1871, edition of the "Pacific Commercial Advertiser" and this must mark the approximate time of his departure for the Kona District of Hawaii where he practiced for the next four years.

In 1873 Dr. Shipley was severely criticized in an article in the "Pacific Commercial Advertiser" which claimed he refused to see a patient with an amputated arm sent down by boat from the Naalehu Plantation to Kona to get Dr. Shipley's opinion as to whether he should be treated at Kona or be sent on to Honolulu. A letter from the plantation was sent to Dr. Shipley explaining the situation and asking him to attend the patient. When the ship anchored at Kailua and the patient was put ashore, the Captain also sent a note to the doctor asking him to call at once so that arrangements could be made to take the man on to Honolulu the next day if that seemed advisable. Three days later, when Dr. Shipley had still not seen the patient, the man in whose care the patient had been left wrote urging the doctor to see the patient. The doctor's answer to all these requests was that he was a government physician and unless he was guaranteed a $25 fee he would not come. The patient lived for ten days at Kailua within ten miles of Dr. Shipley but died without medical attention.

By November, 1875, Dr. Shipley was back in Honolulu with an office at Mr. Strehz's drug store on the corner of Fort and Hotel Streets. Early in 1877 he settled on Kauai where he remained for about two years. In November, 1877, he was appointed a member of the Tax Appeal Board for Koloa and was reappointed the following year. In the fall of 1879 he returned to Hawaii this time to be government physician for the Hamakua District with headquarters at Honokaa.

Dr. Shipley died on December 7, 1880, in Honolulu at the age of 48.

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