VONDY, JOHN (1820-1847)

VONDY, JOHN, doctor; b. Chatham, c1820, s/o Thomas Vondy Sr and Margaret McCullam; brother of Thomas Vondy; d. Middle Island, 29 Jun 1847.

John Vondy's father came to the Miramichi from the Isle of Man around 1816. In the 1830s he was a merchant and liquor vendor in Chatham parish. He and his first wife, Margaret McCullam, raised a talented family, which included two merchants, two doctors, and a teacher.

John Vondy attended the County Grammar School when it was conducted by Archibald Gray and William Jenkins. He later studied medicine in Britain and was admitted to membership in the Royal College of Surgeons of London in May 1842. In his historical work entitled Medicine in New Brunswick, W. Brenton Stewart states that Vondy "practised three or four years near Woodstock and was highly respected in Carleton County." The earliest mention of his return to the Miramichi is found in The Gleaner of 6 April 1847, in which it is stated that he has taken rooms and may be consulted at John Hea's Hotel.

When the barque Looshtauk, under the command of Capt. John M. Thain, unloaded its fever-ridden passengers and crew at the quarantine grounds on Middle Island around 10 June 1847, Vondy alone among Miramichi physicians agreed to occupy a station on the island from which to attend the suffering. Of 467 passengers who had boarded the ship at Liverpool, England, 117 had died enroute, as had eleven of the crew of twenty-four. When they were landed not more than a dozen of the passengers were well enough to walk. The Gleaner of 15 June 1847 reported that twenty more passengers and one crew member had died and that the attending physician had stated that not a single passenger was unaffected. A week later, another seventeen deaths were reported, and a week after that, a further twenty-one. It was also announced in the issue of The Gleaner dated 29 June 1847 that Vondy himself had contracted the disease and was incapacitated.

When Vondy's sister Elizabeth learned of his illness she went to the island to nurse him, but he was unconscious when she arrived. After he died she herself was quarantined. All typhus victims were to have been buried on the island, but an exception was made for Vondy, whose body was sealed in a double coffin and conveyed to St Paul's churchyard at Chatham Head. On the day of his funeral Chatham shops were closed and business largely suspended. Some years later a plaque bearing the following words was erected at the church by public subscription:

THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED AS A PUBLIC TESTIMONIAL OF RESPECT TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN VONDY, ESQ., SURGEON, WHO IN THE FAITHFUL DISCHARGE OF HIS PROFESSIONAL DUTY, FELL VICTIM OF MALIGNANT FEVER WHICH PREVAILED ON MIDDLE ISLAND AMONG THE PASSENGERS OF THE SHIP LOOSHTAUK.

No Miramichi doctor was willing to take Vondy's place on the island, but Dr John Thomson and Dr Alexander Key, who were health officers of the port, made regular visits.