W. Hulke dies (1866)

Post date: Oct 22, 2013 3:10:59 PM

Extract from Taranaki herald of 19 May 1866.

THE LATE W. HULKE, ESQ.

On Wednesday last, a stranger passing through this town would have seen from the flags half-mast at the Town Hall and various flagstaffs, and from the general appearance of the shops and dwellings, that the last duties were being paid to some one well known and respected, as on that day the remains of the late W. Hulke, Esq., were placed in the family vault at Upper Deal. The family of which he was the representative is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) in this town the Hulckee having fled from the Netherlands to this country during the persecution by the Duke of Alva in 1560. At the time of the Commonwealth, when Mr. Dale, the Rector of Upper Deal, was expelled from his living, he came to Lower Deal, and it is recorded that Mr. Hulke, with other members of the congregation, built him a chapel on the site of the present Congregational Chapel in in Lower-street. The name of Hulke appears as one of the Burgesses to whom the original charter of the town was granted. After receiving a good classical education at Wateringbury, Mr. Hulke entered as a pupil at the London Hospital under Sir William Blizzard. He then spent a year at the University of Edinburgh, and completed his medical education in Paris, under the celebrated Dupuytren, and joined his father in practice here as far back as 1814. In those early days the life of a medical man was one of considerable fatigue and hardship, which his robust health and natural energy enabled him succesfully to withstand. There were often dangers to which we are not now exposed. One night, while riding through Lower Walmer along the waste ground, where now the Beach Houses stand, three pistols were fired in rapid succession, and a bullet whistled past his head. A cargo was being run by smugglers and the revenue officers were engaged in conflict with them; on this night a man was killed. Upon this occasion the late Duke of Wellington was nearly choked by a partridge bone sticking in his throat, and Mr. Hulke fortunately happened to be able to thrust the bone down into the stomach, and so relieved his Grace from what at the least was distressing, if not dangerous. He was also present at the death of the Duke, and was invited to attend his funeral in London in 1852. During the last few years of his life he was subject to severe bronchitic attacks, to one of which he succumbed on January 12, 1866, after a painful illness of about ten days duration, which he bore with Christian fortitude and resignation.