Physician-Turned-Spook
Academic and Professional Qualifications: MBBS University of Edinburgh October 25, 1904; FRCS, Edinburgh, Newcastle-Emlyn, 1907; Fellow, Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, 1907.
Fitzwilliams (b.1882, most probably Llandyfriog, Cardiganshire, Wales - d. April 8, 1968) was a house surgeon at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in around 1905-06. He came to Hong Kong either in 1906 or 1907 to start a private practice at the Alexandra Building in Central, but records show that he only registered to practice in Hong Kong on May 7, 1909. He asked his colleague at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, James Cyril Dalmahoy Allan, to join his practice in 1909. Allan came to Hong Kong the following year and became his partner. Fitzwilliams taught Practical Physiology and Pathology 1908-1909, and Anatomy 1909-1912 at the Hong Kong College of Medicine (for Chinese). He was elected a member of the Sanitary Board and served two three-year terms form January 20, 1909. He resided in a suite at the Peak Hotel, which he shared with Allan.
The year next following the onset of the Great War, Ftizwilliams returned to the U.K. and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was shipped to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to work for his brother, Duncan Campbell Lloyd Fitzwilliams, who headed Lady Muriel Paget's Anglo-Russian Hospital. For reason unknown to me he was recruited and had become an operative of the British Secret Intelligence Service some time between 1915 and 1917. (SIS, otherwise known as MI6, was established in 1909; and yes it was home for David John Moore Cornwell, a.k.a. John le Carré, and James Bond, but not his creator Ian Fleming. Fleming was a lieutenant commander RNVR Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) in the Naval Intelligence Division, who served as Navy's liaison officer with MI6.) In 1917, Fitzwilliams, the spook (when I first read about this, I thought the material covered a different person of the same name, I thought wrong), was resent to Russia under the cover of a member of the Anglo-Russian Trade Mission. Very soon, he found his way to Southern Russia and from there to Romania, assuming this time the role of an army captain. His was tasked with collecting intelligence about military and political positions of nations/regions in the Eastern Front, viz. Romania, Poland, and Bohemia, in relation to their loyalty to the Entente. He and a French general by the name of Tabois were given a difficult mission to turn the side of Ukraine that were supporting the Central Powers to fight for the Entente, which they eventually failed. Tabois was under the command of General Henri Mathias Berthelot, chief of the French military mission in Romania. Fitzwilliams left the Eastern Front by the end of 1918.
Two of Fitzwilliams' brothers were also engaged in the same theater of war, and sometimes they met. Duncan Fitzwilliams (b.1878-d.1954), CMG; MD, CM, Edinburgh; FRCS, Edinburgh; London, who were previously in Petrograd, commanded the British Red Cross Unit at the Prince Mircea Hospital in Roman from December 1916 to November 1917. He was a captain of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and on October 10, 1918 was promoted to the rank of acting Lieutenant-Colonel. After the war, he was surgeon at the St. Mary Hospital, and the Mount Vernon Hospital and the Radium Institute, both in London. He was also a prolific author on medical topics; his published works had included: A Practical Manual of Bandaging, Radium and cancer (Curietherapy), Cancer of the breast, etc. The other brother was Edward Crawford Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1872-d.1936), CMG, ASC, of the Royal Army Service Corps; a war hero who served in the Boer War and the Great War. In fact, all eight Fitzwilliams boys were in military service and all except one was in the Great War - fighting, saving lives or spooking around. John Kenrick Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1885-d.1918), MC, a major in the Royal Field Artillery was killed in action during the advance on the Hindenburg Line in August 1918. (John's son, Major Anthony John Fitzwilliams Hyde of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, was wounded landing in Normandy in 1944; he died two weeks after the D-day.) Richard Braithwaite Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1873-d.1902) served in the Royal Indian Marine, and became a lieutenant (Defense Squadron) 1895-1902. He died in service. Cuthbert Collingwood Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1875-d.1954) was in the Army Service Corps as in the case of Edward. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant (temporary) on September 22, 1914. After the war, Cuthbert went to Indonesia to run a rubber plantation. Francis Crompton Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1877-d. Unknown) was in the Royal Navy; he was confirmed as a sub-lieutenant on February 15, 1897. William Logie Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1879-d.1901) was a lance corporal in the First Battalion, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. He was not in the Great War, he died in South Africa on May 20, 1901 fighting the Boer War.
According to J.C. Dalmahoy Allan, who himself went to France in 1917 to join the war, Fitzwilliams was already back in Hong Kong when Allan returned to the city in 1920. Fitzwilliams had by then given up medicine altogether; the scope of his activities in Hong Kong is unknown to me. In fact, I lost his trail at that point, except bits and pieces that said he was sojourning in Africa and Europe before returning to the U.K. in 1932. There was no information that showed whether his SIS role ended along with the Great War, or he took it with him to Hong Kong, and thence to Africa and Europe.
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| Fitzwilliams' brother Edward in dress uniform. Credit: Dave Boutcher |
Fitzwilliams was the son of Charles Home Lloyd Fitzwilliams (b.1843-d.1925) and Margaret Alice Crawford (b.1847-d.1928). His grandfather, Edward Crompton Lloyd Hall (b.1807-d.1880), had his surname changed to Fitzwilliams in 1849 to sever ties with his father, Benjamin Hall, on knowing that he wasn't going to inherit anything from Benjamin despite of his status as the eldest son. I tried and failed to find a photograph of Fitzwilliams, but noted it was natural for SIS men to be camera shy [Well, that is not true, there is a good number of photos taken of him in 1917-18 in Romania, some together with Duncan and Edward; they are simply not available to me.] I did find one of Edward in dress uniform, which is really too brilliant a photo not to be shared. Sotheby held an auction on June 27, 1969, in which the bulk of the contents were property of Fitzwilliams who died in 1968, unmarried. The catalog of this auction is even available today on the internet. Fitzwilliams had been keeping a journal since 1902 and continued until 1968, the year he died. His diaries, all 68 volume, are now kept at the National Library of Wales.
Selected bibliography: The Archer Family [internet]. BBC / WW2 People's War [internet]. The British Journal of Nursing, January 26, 1918. Carmarthen County War Memorial / County Boer War Memorials [internet]. Evans, Dafydd Emrys (Ed.) Constancy of Purpose, Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987. The Edinburgh Obstetrical Society (1922) The Transactions of the Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, Session 1920-1921, Volume XLI, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. Edinburgh University Sports Union [internet]. Hiroyoshi Kano (2008) Indonesian Exports, Peasant Agriculture and the World Economy 1850-2000, Singapore: National University of Singapore. The Hong Kong Government Gazette, January 29, 1909, Appointment #49; May 7, 1909, Notice #279; January 26, 1912, Appointment #20. James Cyril Dalmahoy Allan, A Memoir by D.F., The Archers, the Goodmans and Associated Families [internet]. London Gazette, December 21, 1897; October 3, 1914 (Supplement); March 1, 1919 (Supplement). National Archives › India Office Records › Royal Indian Marine / Navy [internet]. The Secretary of the State for India in Council (1902) The Indian List and Indian Office List for 1902, London: Harrison and Sons. Tomaselli, P., C's Moscow station – The Anglo-Russian trade mission as cover for SIS in the early 1920s, [s.l.][s.n], 2002. The Peerage, A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe [internet]. Rhyfel Byd 1914-1918 a’r profiad Cymreig › Welsh experience of World War 1914-1918 [internet]. Victor M. Fic, Victor N., Revolutionary War for Independence and the Russian Question, New Delhi: Shakti Malik Abhinav Publications, 1977.
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