Murdoch Cameron - Controversial Appointment

Controversial Appointment

In recognition of his pioneering work Cameron was appointed honorary President of the first international Congress on Obstetrics and Gynaecology, held in Brussels, in 1892. In 1894, on the recommendation of the Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir George Trevelyan, Murdoch Cameron succeeded Leishman to the position of Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow.

It was an appointment that created furious controversy in some quarters. In an anonymous letter to The Times, London, on January 8, 1894, one correspondent condemned Murdoch Cameron’s election as ‘a heavy blow to the prestige and prosperity of Scotch Universities’. Dr Cameron’s only claim to the position, the correspondent wrote, was that he ‘is an ardent Gladstonian partisan’.

Nevertheless, Cameron held the position of Professor of Midwifery for thirty-two years, and was awarded an honorary LLD for ‘a long period of faithful, useful and distinguished service’ by the University of Glasgow at his retirement. During four decades of academic teaching, Cameron taught four of his successors to the Chair of Midwifery: John Martin Munro Kerr, Samuel James Cameron, James Hendry and Robert Aim Lennie. Murdoch Cameron died in Glasgow in 1930.