The Search for Patrick Kerr Dixon's family

The Times Newspaper obituary in 1955

This is just a quick post to mention an interesting contact received this week from the archive development officer for the Belfast Charitable Society linked to Clifton House, Belfast.

Clifton House recently uncovered a wonderful trove of over 180 letters dating from World War I, written by Lt Patrick Kerr Dixon, later Dr Dixon FRCSI (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland).

Dixon spent time in the Belgian Congo with the Garenganze Evangelical Mission and later worked for many years in Zambia at Chibambo, Mbereshi, and Lusaka.

He was a friend of Charles Fisher and the book 'Nswana' records that Fisher hoped to travel up the Nile to Palestine with Patrick 'a surgeon from Dublin whose mission hospital at Chibambo was many miles further south [from Kalene Hill] on the Luapula River. They gave up these plans when Patrick was called suddenly to another hospital vacant on account of a serious scandal, and Charles also received disturbing news of his father's increasing ill-health'.  Monica and Charles visited Dixon a few days after they were married.

We are told that the population at Chibambo provided plenty of patients for the hospital where Dixon operated and that he was 'the first doctor in Northern Rhodesia to recognize the cause of the very high incidence of blindness among the children in the Luapula Valley, writing a short paper describing the cases he'd seen.'  He also wrote a handbook for medical assistants, used in missions on the Congo side of the Luapula river.

Dixon's first marriage was to Olive Arther, fom Dublin. 'Nswana' records Olive died in childbirth. Dixon was conducting the delivery himself as no one else was available.

In 1934 he married Isabella H. Russell, of Mbereshi Mission, and had a daughter from his second marriage.

In 1953 he went to work at the African Medical Hospital in Lusaka as a surgeon, and taught at the African Medical School.

He died on April 21, 1955 and was buried at Aylmer May Cemetery, although their website register misrecords his name as Dion and his middle initial as R. They have his burial date as the 23rd of April.

I was pleased to be able to find his gravestone amongst my photos.

Patrick Kerr Dixon

1898 - 1955

I believe that the memorial reads "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it", which is Matthew 16 verse 25.

Can you help find Patrick Dixon's descendants? If so, please contact the Belfast Charitable Society archivist - the email address is archive@cliftonbelfast.org.uk.