400 MJA Vol 178 21 April 2003
HISTORY
The Medical Journal of Australia ISSN: 0025-729X 21
April 2003 178 8 400-402
©The Medical Journal of Australia 2003 www.mja.com.au
History
JOHN SIMPSON KIRKPATRICK, generally known as “Simp-
son”, is one of the most famous Anzacs of the Gallipoli
campaign.
1-3
From the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915
until his death 25 days later, Simpson and his donkey
retrieved perhaps 300 casualties from the battlefield. He did
this work independently, sometimes in disregard of orders,
and frequently with a disregard for danger that kept the
onlooking soldiers in the trenches enthralled as they
watched him moving calmly to rescue wounded soldiers
while under direct fire from the enemy. He is often thought
of as the quintessential larrikin Anzac, although he was born
in England and only spent four years in Australia before
enlisting in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1914.
Simpson’s childhood was spent in Tyneside, United King-
dom, where his selfless military service is also well remem-
bered.
Early childhood
John Kirkpatrick was born on 6 July 1892 in a newly-built
4
three-roomed terrace tenement at 10 South Eldon Street, in
the Tyne Dock area of South Shields.
5
He was the son of
Robert Kirkpatrick (c.1845–1909), a merchant navy sea-
man, and a domestic housekeeper, Sarah Simpson (c.1856–
1933).
6
Kirkpatrick had three surviving elder sisters and one
elder brother. Census records reveal that their mother was
sometimes away, and help with the care of the children in
1892 was provided by a domestic live-in servant, Ettie
Crozier, aged 15 years.
5
His younger sister Annie (born 10
November 1884) wrote to John and sent him cigarettes
when he was working as a ship’s stoker on Australian coastal
traders and subsequently at Gallipoli.
2
It is known from Kirkpatrick’s surviving letters that food
was not plentiful in his family, and the neighbourhood was
poor.
2
There was no social welfare. In one letter dated 31
An Anzac’s childhood: John Simpson
Kirkpatrick (1892–1915)
John H Pearn and David Gardner-Medwin
Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Herston, QLD.
John H Pearn, MD, PhD, FRACP, Surgeon General Australia.
Station Road, Heddon-On-The-Wall, UK.
David Gardner-Medwin, MD, FRCP, Retired Paediatric Neurologist.
Reprints will not be available from the authors. Correspondence: Professor
John H Pearn, Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal
Children's Hospital, Herston, QLD 4029. j.pearn@mailbox.uq.edu.au
Tyneside children, contemporaries of John Simpson Kirkpatrick,
playing in the street at the beginning of the 20th century. Epidemics of
diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough and mumps swept
through the Tyneside estates. (Photograph courtesy of the Ward
Philipson Group, Gateshead, UK.)
A short life of Simpson
1892 John Simpson Kirkpatrick (“Simpson”) born at 10 Eldon Street, Tyne Dock,
South Shields, UK.
1898–1905 Attended school.
1906–1908 Worked as a milk-float boy.
1908–1909 Volunteer coastal-defence gunner with the 4th Durham (Howitzer) Battery of the
4th Northumbrian County of Durham Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.
1909–1914 Went to sea. Worked as a stoker and engine room greaser, mostly on Australian
coastal shipping vessels.
1914 Enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps on 24 August, 20 days after Britain
declared war on Germany.
1915 Landed at Anzac Cove on 25 April as a stretcher bearer with 3 Australian Field
Ambulance. An undisciplined soldier, Simpson worked alone with donkeys he
found in camp. He retrieved 200–300 men before he was killed by machinegun
fire on 19 May — his 25th day of active service.
“Simpson and his donkey”. Gallipoli,
1915. (Australian War Memorial negative
number J06392.)
HISTORY
MJA Vol 178 21 April 2003 401
HISTORY
May 1911 he replies to his mother’s plan to become a
shopkeeper in Edward Street, South Shields:
I am very much afraid that you are in the wrong district …
for the people round there would rob “Old Nick” himself if
he gave “Tick” [ie, credit] and I suppose you will know that
there is no hope unless you give the good old “Tick”. I
wasn’t four years going round with the milk without finding
out a little of there [sic] weak points.
Robert Kirkpatrick and his family moved frequently,
perhaps because of difficulties paying the rent. John Kirk-
patrick lived in at least five homes, and possibly six or more,
during the first 16 years of his life. His father was frequently
at sea, until he was injured in 1904, thereafter remaining at
home as an invalid until his death in 1909 when John was 17
years old.
2
The boy’s entire childhood was spent in working-class
streets. Census data from 1891 lists the occupation of the
Kirkpatricks’ neighbours as sailor, boilersmith, dressmaker,
blacksmith, steam-engine fitter and iron moulder;
5
in 1901
the neighbours were a shipyard plater, shipyard labourer,
boilersmith and draper’s assistant.
7
The local society in
which he grew up was dominated by shipbuilding and its
industries, the Tyne River and the sea beyond.
Schooling
Kirkpatrick began school, aged six years, at the Barnes Road
Infants’ School in 1898. Surviving archives record that the
school was crowded; in 1904 (four years after Kirkpatrick
had left) it was closed for some weeks because 40 of the 509
pupils had measles, mumps, whooping cough or diphtheria.
Kirkpatrick’s initial two years of education included a
curriculum of “reading, recitation, writing, arithmetic, sing-
ing and drawing”.
8
In July 1900, about the time of his eighth birthday,
Kirkpatrick transferred to the South Shields Barnes Road
Boys’ School, where he remained a pupil until 19 June
1903.
9
His attendance was exemplary, and he was absent for
only one day throughout the school year of 1900–1901.
10
He learned to read and write fluently at school. He was a
prolific letter-writer in his later teenage years, although his
punctuation and spelling were somewhat deficient. In 1903
he transferred to Mortimer Road Council School, where he
completed his formal education in 1905 immediately before
his thirteenth birthday.
After Kirkpatrick’s death at Anzac Cove, two memorial
bursaries were instituted at Mortimer Road School, but
these were abandoned in the 1960s. A building at the school
was also named the Kirkpatrick House Block. The building
was subsequently demolished in 1990.
Of Kirkpatrick’s surviving correspondence, nothing
remains that refers to his childhood. Information from his
sister Annie suggests that he had a typical Tyneside boy-
hood.
2
The young Jack “played cricket using wickets
chalked on a brick wall”. He kept rabbits and “was an
ordinary boy with little relish for scholarship but delighted
in pranks and games and an occasional escapade”. He
played in the environs of the Gutt leading to Tyne Dock.
The “Gutt” was an inlet with stone paving sloping down
into the water to facilitate coal-loading. It was a scene of
constant activity between people, animals, goods and the
water of the Tyne. He attended weekly Sunday School at St
Mary’s Church (now demolished).
Life-saving influences?
John Kirkpatrick spent the first 16 years of his life
in South Shields, Tyneside. It was here that the life
boat was invented by Greathead and Wouldhave
in 1789. A second lifeboat, the “Tyne”, managed
by the Tyne Lifeboat Institution, was said to have
saved 1028 lives between 1833 and 1894. It was
then placed on public display in Ocean Road,
South Shields, close to where Simpson grew up.
The painting, “A wreck off the South Pier, South
Shields, 1861”, by John Scott, shows the “Tyne” in
action. The painting has been on display in the
South Shields Museum and Art Gallery since the
late 19th century. (Reproduced courtesy of Tyne
and Wear Museums.)
The terrace of John Williamson Street, Tyne Dock, South Shields, UK,
built about 1889. Simpson lived briefly at number 360, far right.
402 MJA Vol 178 21 April 2003
HISTORY
Teenage years
Kirkpatrick left school before his 13th birthday, and was
employed as a milk-float boy. His sister Annie wrote later:
2
Jack had a dappled grey pony [which pulled the milk float]
with which he became close friends. His devotion to
“Andrew”, to whom he talked like a human, was known to
everybody on the milk rounds.
Like many local teenage boys, Kirkpatrick volunteered to
train at weekends as a coastal defence gunner in the Royal
Field Artillery.
11
He served in the Howitzer Battery at South
Shields and trained nearby at Trow Lea and attended
annual Volunteer Camp at Fleetwood in Lancashire, with
his volunteer colleagues. It is probable that this was the first
time, at 17 years of age, that he had journeyed beyond
Tyneside.
After his father’s death in 1909, Kirkpatrick left Tyneside
to go to sea. His second ship, the SS Ye d d o , brought him to
Australia via South America. He then worked for four years,
mostly at sea, as a stoker and as an engine-room greaser on
Australian coastal shipping vessels. He tried cane cutting
and horse-mounted stock work in north Queensland, each
for a period of about one week, but found the overwhelming
heat and humidity intolerable.
During this time Kirkpatrick was leading a knockabout
life. He jumped ship when it suited him, and, as his letters to
his mother showed,
2
enjoyed a drunken brawl with his
fellows.
At the outbreak of war in 1914, he was one of the first to
enlist (on 25 August 1914) at Perth, in 3 Australian Field
Ambulance. His physical strength and fitness (of which he
was very proud)
were ideally suited to his Anzac duties as a
stretcher-bearer in the Australian Army Medical Corps. On
a number of occasions he rescued two wounded soldiers
simultaneously.
His gregarious “Geordie” personality stamped him as a
“character” among his fellow soldiers at Gallipoli. He has
been described variously as “original, forthright, fearless,
ingenious and generous hearted”; and as “witty, cracking
jokes, happily lazy at times, careless of dress, a friendly chap
and one who was a ‘handful’ to … his Section Sergeant”.
2
Simpson’s lasting fame arises from just 25 days of active
service. What made him such a hero? The record we have
cannot quite unfold the enigmatic “incalculable personal
factor” which Lord Moran felt was “the essence of cour-
age”.
12
Acknowledgements
We thank particularly Dr Christopher Gardner-Thorpe, Consultant Neurologist of Exeter,
for much encouragement; Mr John Moreels of the Ward Philipson Group, Gateshead;
and Mr James Fell and the Tyne and Wear Museums for gracious permission to publish
photographs.
References
1. Benson I. The man with the donkey. John Simpson Kirkpatrick. The good
samaritan of Gallipoli. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.
2. Cochrane P. Simpson and the donkey. The making of a legend. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1992.
3. Curran T. Across the bar. The story of “Simpson”, the man with the donkey.
Australia and Tyneside’s great military hero. Brisbane: OGMIOS Publications,
1994.
4. Ward’s Directory of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gateshead, North and South Shields.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne: R. Ward and Sons. Annual Ward’s Directories from 1888.
[South Eldon Street, John Kirkpatrick’s birthplace address, was not listed in
Ward’s Directory for South Shields until 1891–92, page 248].
5. Public Record Office, UK. The 1891 Census for England and Wales. Administra-
tive County of South Shields, Civil Parish of Westhoe, Municipal Ward of Tyne
Dock. Census entry for 10 South Eldon Street. [Robert Kirkpatrick, head of family.
Lists children and Ettie Crozier, a 15-year-old domestic servant].
6. Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, UK. Birth certificate of John Kirk-
patrick, born 6 July 1892 at 10 South Eldon Street, Westhoe. Son of Robert
Kirkpatrick and Sarah Simpson, domestic housekeeper. Certificate No. 223, birth
registered 3 August 1892. Registration District of South Shields, sub-District of
Westhoe, Counties of South Shields and Durham, Copied Cert No. CM 365464
dated 16 Sept 2002.
7. Public Record Office, UK. The 1901 Census for England and Wales. Administra-
tive County of Durham, Civil Parish of South Shields, Ward Borough of Dean’s
Ward. Entry for South Frederick Street [Nos 127-153]. PRO Reference No. RG 13/
4736.
8. Memorandum Book of the South Shields School Board. Ref T116/1-8 [487-557].
9. Tyne and Wear. The County Archives. Admission Register. South Shields Barnes
Road Board School [School No. 1416]. Boys Department Ref T116/1-8 (Unpag).
School record of John Kirkpatrick.
10. Tyne and Wear. The County Archives. South Shields School Board: Barnes Boys’
School. Memorandum Book [Ref T116/I-unpag].
11. Hogg OFG. The history of the 3rd Durham Volunteer Artillery, now part of the
274th (Northumbrian) Field Regiment, R.A. (T.A.) 1860–1960. South Shields
[Durham], The Northern Press Limited, undated [c.1970]: 41.
12. Moran C. The anatomy of courage. London: Constable, 1945.
(Received 14 Jan 2003, accepted 13 Mar 2003) ❏
This medallion showing
Simpson and his donkey is
presented annually by the
Returned and Services
League to an outstanding
Australian “for exceptional
service to the Australian
community demonstrating
compassion, endurance and
dedication”. (Photograph
courtesy of Dr Robert Pearce.)
“Simpson” on the web
Simpson and his donkey (John Simpson Kirkpatrick). Australian
War Memorial. <http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/
simpson.htm>
Simpson and his donkey. Convict Creations.Com — The hidden
story of Australia's missing links. <http://www.convictcreations.com/
history/simpson.htm>
John Simpson Kirkpatrick. July 6, 1892 – May 19, 1915. Anzac
House Youth Hostel. <http://www.anzachouse.com/simpson.shtml>
Stretcher bearers. Digger history: an unofficial history of the
Australian Armed Services. <http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-
nurses/stretcher.htm>
