Walter George Burnett DICKINSON

Major Walter George Burnett Dickinson FRCVS died while purchasing horses for the Army in August 1914.

Walter Dickinson was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, on 22 April 1858. He attended Boston Grammar School, the Alfort École de Veterinaire in Paris, and the New Veterinary College in Edinburgh, which Prof William Williams ran. In 1881, he took over his father’s veterinary practice in Boston and married two years later.

He was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and later served as President of the Lincolnshire Veterinary Medical Society. In 1904, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He joined the Lincolnshire Garrison Artillery Volunteers in February 1902 as a veterinary officer and was promoted to Captain in 1905 and then Major in 1913.

Dickinson served with the 1st Battery, 1st North Midland Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery.

When the threat of war increased in July 1914, the government took the precaution of buying horses from farmers across the country to meet the requirements of possible mobilisation. Dickinson’s combination of military position and veterinary knowledge made him the first choice to oversee this duty in the Boston area.

On 6 August, two days after war was declared, he was visiting a Butterwick Farm and, having negotiated the sale of some horses, he returned to his car and collapsed dead. He had a history of heart disease and was killed by arteriosclerosis. He was 56.

He is buried with military honours in Boston Cemetery beneath a standard Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone, listing him as a Major in the Royal Field Artillery.

His obituary written in the Veterinary Record on August 22, 1914, describes Dickinson as:

“a man of kindly and genial disposition, widely read and took a keen interest in all that concerned the advancement of the veterinary profession, as well as in local matters … he was a keen churchman and most popular with all who knew him.’