Henry Fry (anthropologist)

Henry Kenneth Fry (born 25 May 1886 North Adelaide, South Australia ) was a physician and anthropologist, and Medical Officer for the City of Adelaide.

Education

He attended University of Adelaide and received his BSc 1905, MBBS 1908, MD 1934. He was a 1909 Rhodes Scholar (Balliol) Obtained another BSc, and diplomas in public health and anthropology, in 1912.

Career

• 1913: Succeeded Herbert Basedow as chief medical inspector of Aborigines, based in Darwin.
• World War I:
  • 1914: Appointed captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps, Australian Imperial Force.
  • 1915: Gallipoli.
  • 1916: France - deputy assistant director of medical services (D.A.D.M.S.), 2nd Division.
  • 1916: Awarded the Distinguished Service Order for supervising the evacuation of the wounded while under constant shell-fire at Pozières and Sausage Valley in July–August 1916.
  • 1917: Promoted lieutenant colonel and given command of the 13th Field Ambulance.
• 1918: On 21 October 1918 he married Dorothy Editha Deeley with Anglican rites at the Church of the Epiphany, Crafers.
• 1919: By January 1919 he was back in France as temporary colonel and A.D.M.S., 5th Division. His A.I.F. appointment terminated on 26 December. He was thrice mentioned in dispatches.
• 1920: Established a private practice in Eastwood in a house of his own design which incorporated a surgery, laboratory and one of the first X-ray units in the State.
• From 1920 he lectured in materia medica and therapeutics in the neurology department at the university. He was also an honorary physician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and an official visitor to Parkside Mental Hospital.
• Member (from 1923) and president (1939) of the Royal Society of South Australia.
• 1926: With Draper Campbell, (Sir) John Cleland, Frederic Wood Jones, Robert Pulleine, and Archibald Watson, Fry formed the Board for Anthropological Research.
• 1929-1937: Numerous medical, ethnological, and anthropological research expeditions to Aboriginal lands in Central Australia.
• 1930-57: Published over twenty scientific papers on Aboriginal kinship, psychology and mythology.
• 1937: Moved to Crafers.
• 1938: Part-time public health officer for the City of Adelaide.
• 1939: Founding fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
• 1959: Died 22 July 1959 Stirling.

Documents

South Australian Museum Archives contain:

• Manuscript and typescript papers on kinship, education and other aspects of Aboriginal cultures and on the peoples of Melville and Bathurst Islands;
• notebooks and logs kept on various expeditions with notebooks for psychological tests;
• correspondence 1933-57 and with Ursula McConnel on the social organisation of Aboriginal cultures 1950-52;
• bibliography of papers on anthropology by South Australian research workers 1927-38;
• transcription from the original of 'A Short History of New Australia' by H.K. Fry;
• miscellaneous paintings, extracts, maps and
• a notebook dated 1875 kept by Dr. Lumbers.

See also

• Jones, Philip, 'Fry, Henry Kenneth (1896-1959), Anthropologist and Medical Practitioner', in John Ritchie (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 14, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 230–231.
• The H.K. Fry Memorial Prize for Psychological Medicine
• 1908 photo of Fry on graduation with MBBS (Fry is in the centre, seated). Information about the photo.
• 1915 photo of Fry at Gallipoli (Australian War Memorial archives). Information about the circumstances of the photo (ANZACDay.org.au)