The Kildysart anatomist: Thomas Peter Garry

ON a soft day in mid-August, while on holiday in Quilty, I thought it would be a good day to fulfil a long-held desire – to find and visit the grave of Tom Garry. I had never met the man, as he died when I was a child but I had heard of him from early childhood from my father. Tom (1885-1963) was born in Kildysart, to a farming family whose home place was Fort Hill.
After a short stay at university in Galway, he moved to Dublin and enrolled as a medical student at the Royal College of Surgeons. From the very beginning he was a scholarly student who quickly found that the study of anatomy totally absorbed him and for which he had a particular gift of simplifying the subject in a systematic and logical way. His fellow students recognised this and soon he was giving his classmates assistance. The college academics also recognised his abilities and a career in anatomy was structured for him. This marked the end of his perhaps half-hearted ambition of qualifying as a doctor.
In medical schools everywhere the study of anatomy was regarded as paramount, so much so that in those days, just after World War I, it was necessary for medical students to spend a total of 600 hours in the anatomy dissecting room during the two years that they studied anatomy. The subject was learned through a series of lectures combined with demonstrations conducted by the teachers utilising cadavers (embalmed bodies). Tom was such a knowledgeable anatomist with an extraordinary teaching ability that his demonstrations were always thronged with attentive students.
The study of anatomy played such an important role in students’ lives, it is not surprising that out-of-hours grinds were given by teachers. One of the most sought-after was Tom’s grind, which he held in his house at 33 York Street, conveniently situated beside the College of Surgeons.
Tom’s routine was to attend college every day, spending most of his time in the anatomy room. After work, he would go to Robert Robert’s café in Grafton Street for his evening meal. He would then return to his house in York Street, where he gave grinds to groups of students, usually eight to 10 at a time. The grind sessions went on late into the evening, after which he might go for a quiet drink in Neary’s pub off Grafton Street. This was a well-known haunt of his, where he met his friends.
The evening study grinds were certainly time consuming for Tom but were not a lucrative exercise, as he did not charge very much and frequently did not charge at all, particularly if he knew a student was short of funds.
For diversion, he had a great interest in botany. The academic side came naturally to him. In addition though, he regularly went on field trips. He usually would set out on Saturday mornings by taking the St Kevin’s bus from St Stephen’s Green, just opposite the main entrance to the College of Surgeons, out to Enniskerry or even as far as Glendalough. Walking through the countryside, he would collect specimens from the roadside and fields for closer study when back home in York Street. He had, by all accounts, a very large and impressive collection, part of which he exhibited at a show in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). Each summer he would spend a few weeks with his extended family in Kildysart. This allowed him to study the flora of County Clare.
Unfortunately, years of work on a wide variety of academic subjects was lost as a result of a fire in his house in York Street. This event, resulting in the loss of most of his life’s work, affected him deeply.
The accompanying photograph is of Tom (centre) with two of his friends on a ferry to France. This was an organised trip to visit the battlefields of Northern France after World War I. At the time, around 1927, there was still lots of memorabilia to be easily picked up from the battlefields. Bullets, spent cartridge cases and pieces of shrapnel were standard souvenirs, which were added to Garry’s varied collection of books, plants and bones.
Tom’s death in 1963 was, of course, a great loss. But his contribution to the teaching of anatomy is well recognised and remembered, even today. The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland actively keep his memory alive through an anatomical research programme in his name.
In the tranquil graveyard of Kildysart, Tom Garry’s headstone is easily found, being straight in front of you as you enter the gate. It is comforting to see that, though he did not have a family himself, he rests in the company of other members of the Garry clan. For a man who loved the countryside but lived most of his life in the centre of Dublin, the peaceful rural setting of Kildysart on the banks of the mighty River Shannon seems a most appropriate final resting place.