John Haddon's Trip Around the World in 1882

I found yesterday's talk after the AGM very interesting.

The speaker, Andrew Haddon, told us a bit about the family tree. John was descended from Andrew Haddon (born 1690) a flesher or butcher in Selkirk.

John's father was another Andrew Haddon (1818-1894), his mother was Anne White (1821-1878) and John had 10 siblings.

Andrew showed us two books written by John, 'A Doctor's Discovery and the Elixir of Life' and 'Diary of a Trip Around the World in 1882'. The latter book was reprinted from the Hawick News.

John became a well-to-do doctor with a thriving practice in Manchester, but after an illness, he decided to go around the world to recover.

Initially, he crossed the Atlantic in the SS Parisian (it didn't look like a luxury ship). He visited various places in Canada and in the USA including Chicago, Salt Lake City, San Francisco; he was very impressed by the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and said it would one day be the best hospital in the world. He also visited the Sandwich Islands (now called Hawaii), Samoa, New Zealand and Australia. He met fellow Scots, including Kentucky senator James Burnie Beck.

There was a lot more but unfortunately my pen dried up about halfway through the talk,