Obituary Notice
In the death of Sir Bryan Donkin, which occurred at his house in Hyde Park Street in the eighty-third year of his age, the Central Association for Mental Welfare and all it represents has lost a firm friend. He was a man of encyclopaedic knowledge and withal the kindliest and most unassuming of men.
Donkin was educated at Blackheath Proprietary School and thence went to Queen’s College, Oxford, as an open scholar, graduating in the first class of the Classical Tripos. He graduated as M.B., Oxon, in 1873, and became a F.R.C.P. Lon. in 1880, and during his active professional life held many important appointments and was Harveian Orator in 1910. He was physician and lecturer on Medicine at Westminster Hospital and Physician to the East London Hospital for Children, and Examiner in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians. He was the author of many papers dealing with mental deficiency and criminality.
Donkin was appointed a Prison Commissioner in 1898 and threw himself with ardour into the duties of that office. He was an active member of the Royal Commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded (1908) the outcome of which was the Mental Deficiency Act (1913).
He retired from his post as Commissioner of Prisons in 1910 on attaining the age of 65, and his valuable services were recognised by the knighthood conferred on him in the following year. His activities on the Prison Commission were continued after retirement, as medical adviser to the Prisons Board and as Director of Convict Prisons. In addition he was made a member of the Board of Visitors for the State Inebriate Reformatory at Aylesbury, a member of the Visiting Committee of the Borstal Institution at Aylesbury, and a member of the Advisory Committee at Camp Hill in the Isle of Wight, which is a prison for men undergoing sentences of preventive detention. He continued his valuable services in this last appointment until a few months before his death.
Sir Bryan was a loyal friend, a firm but kindly administrator and one who was always ready to place his wide general knowledge of medicine and his special knowledge of nervous and mental diseases at the service of his colleagues.
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