The Emancipist: An Historical Drama in Three Acts

The only medical interest in this play is that the hero was a medical man and, as is claimed in the introduction, was the first medical graduate in Australia. It is hardly correct to style him a graduate for he received his diploma after a special examination held at his own request by certain leading doctors in the colony at the time, long before any medical schools were established there. Redfern is a romantic character who only became a convict on account of his championing the cause of the men of the British Navy in an attempt to obtain for them the badly-needed better food and accommodation, while he was assistant surgeon on H. M. S. Standard. He was tried by court martial and sentenced to death, but was reprieved and imprisoned in Dartmoor and four years later was transferred to Australia at his own request. Not long after his arrival in New South Wales he was lucky in attracting the attention of the authorities so that he was given medical work to do, instead of the monotonous manual labour that was the' lot of practically all convicts. He worked so well and successfully that he was finally granted a free pardon and became one of the principal doctors in Sydney