W. H. R. Rivers

W. H. R. Rivers
Photograph of Rivers taken by Henry Maull
Born	(1864-03-12)March 12, 1864 Chatham, Kent
Died	June 4, 1922(1922-06-04) (aged 58) Evelyn Nursing Home, Cambridge
Nationality	English
Alma mater	University of London Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital
Known for	Treating shell-shocked soldiers during World War I 1898 Torres Strait Islands expedition
Awards	Royal Medal, 1915
Scientific career
Fields	Anthropology Ethnology Neurology Psychiatry Psychology
Institutions	University of Cambridge

William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS, ((1864-03-12)March 12, 1864 - (1922-06-04)June 4, 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work with shell-shocked soldiers during World War I. Rivers' most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon. He is also famous for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898, and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship.

Biography

Family background

Rivers was born in 1864 at Constitution Hill, Chatham, Kent, son of Elizabeth Hunt (1840-1897) and Henry Frederick Rivers (1830–1911).

Records from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries show the Rivers family to be solidly middle-class with many Cambridge, Church of England and Royal Navy associations, the most famous of which were Midshipman William Rivers and his father Gunner Rivers who both served aboard HMS Victory.

The senior Rivers, also called William, was the master gunner aboard The Victory and it is thanks to his commonplace book (now kept in the Royal Naval Museum library in Portsmouth) that many of the thought of the sailors aboard Nelson’s flagship are preserved. Midshipman Rivers, claimed to be ‘the man who shot the man who fatally wounded Lord Nelson’ proved himself to be a model of heroism in the Battle of Trafalgar. In the course of his duties, the seventeen-year-old midshipman’s foot was almost completely blown off by a grenade, left attached to him ‘by a Piece of Skin abought 4 inch above the ankle’. Rivers asked first for his shoes, then told the gunner’s mate to look after the guns and informed Captain Hardy that he was going down to the cockpit. Nelson remarked, ‘Hardy, mind he is provided for. It is my Desire.’ The leg was then sawn off, without anaesthetic, four inches below the knee. According to legend, he did not cry out once during the amputation nor during the consequent sealing of the wound with hot tar. When Gunner Rivers, anxious about his son’s welfare, went to the cockpit to ask after him to young man called out from the other side of the deck, ‘Here I am, Father, nothing is the matter with me; only lost my leg and that in a good cause.’ After the Battle, the senior Rivers wrote a poem about his remarkable son entitled ‘Lines on a Young Gentleman that lost his leg onboard the Victory in the Glorious action at Trafalgar’:

May every comfort Bless thy future life,

And smooth thy cares with fond and tender wife.

Which of you all Would not have freely died,

To Save Brave Nelson There Dear Country’s Pride

Born to another naval Rivers, Lt. William Rivers, R.N., then stationed at Deptford, Kent, Henry Rivers followed many family traditions in being educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and entering the church. Having earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1857, he was ordained as a Church of England priest in 1858, a career that would span almost 50 years until, in 1904, he was forced to tender his resignation due to ‘infirmities of sight and memory’.

In 1863, having obtained a curacy at Chatham in addition to a chaplain’s post, Henry Rivers was in a position to marry Elizabeth Hunt who was living with her brother James in Hastings, not far from Chatham.

The Hunts, like the Riverses, were an established naval and Church of England family. One of those destined for the pulpit was Thomas (1802-1851), but some quirk of originality set him off into an unusual career. While an undergraduate at Cambridge, Thomas Hunt had a friend who stammered badly and his efforts to aid the afflicted student led him to leave the University without taking a degree in order to make a thorough study of speech and its defects. He built up a good practise as a speech therapist and was patronised by Sir John Forbes MD FRS, who sent him pupils for twenty four years. Hunt’s most famous case came about in 1842 when George Pearson, the chief witness in the case respecting the attempt on the life of Queen Victoria made by John Francis, was brought into court he was incapable of giving his evidence. However, after just a fortnight's instruction from Hunt he spoke easily, a fact certified by the sitting magistrate. Hunt died in 1851, survived by his wife Mary and their two children. His practise was then passed on to his son, James.

James Hunt (1833-1869) was an exuberant character, giving to each of his ventures his boundless energy and self-confidence. Taking up his father’s legacy with great zeal, by the age of 21 Hunt had published his compendious work, "Stammering and Stuttering, Their Nature and Treatment". This went into six editions during his lifetime and was reprinted again in 1870, just after his death, and for an eighth time in 1967 as a landmark in the history of speech therapy. In the introduction to the 1967 edition of the book, Elliot Schaffer notes that in his short lifetime James Hunt is said to have treated over 1,700 cases of speech impediment, firstly in his father’s practise and later at his own institute, Ore House near Hastings, which he set up with the aid a doctorate he had purchased in 1856 from the University of Giessen in Germany.

In later, expanded editions, "Stammering and Stuttering" begins to reflect Hunt’s growing passion for anthropology exploring, as it does, the nature of language usage and speech disorders in non-European peoples. In 1856, Hunt had joined the Ethnological Society of London and by 1859 he was its joint secretary. He was not, however, a popular man within the society as many of the members disliked his attacks on religious and humanitarian agencies represented by missionaries and the anti-slavery movement.

As a result of the antagonism, Hunt founded the Anthropological Society and became its president, a position that would be taken up by his nephew almost sixty years later. It was mainly to do with Hunt’s efforts that the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) accepted anthropology in 1866.

Even by Victorian standards, Hunt was a decided racist. His paper "On a Negro’s Place in Nature", delivered before the BAAS in 1863, was met with hisses and catcalls. What Hunt saw as “a statement of the simple facts” was in fact a defence of the subjection and slavery of African-Americans and a support of the belief in the plurality of human species.

In addition to his extremist views, Hunt also led his society to incur heavy debts. The controversies surrounding his conduct told on his health and, on the 29th of August 1869, Hunt died of ‘inflammation of the brain’ leaving a widow, Henrietta Maria, and five children.

Hunt’s speech therapy practise was passed onto Hunt’s brother-in-law, Henry Rivers, who had been working with him for some time. With the practise came many of Hunt’s established patients, most notably The Reverend Charles L. Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) who had been a regular visitor to Ore House.

To his nephew William, Hunt had left his books though a young Rivers had refused them, thinking that they would be of no use to him.

Early life

William Halse Rivers Rivers was the the oldest of four children, with his siblings being brother Charles Hay (29th August 1865- 8th November1939) and sisters Ethel Marian (30th October 1867-1943) and Katharine Elizabeth (1871-1939).

William, known as 'Willie' throughout his childhood , appears to have taken his Christian name from his famous uncle of "Victory" fame, as well as from a longstanding family tradition whereby the eldest son of every line would be baptised by that name. The origin of ‘Halse’ is unclear, though it is possible that there is some naval connection as it has been suggested that it could have been the name of someone serving alongside his uncle. Slobodin states that it is probable that the second 'Rivers' entered his name as a result of a clerical error on the baptismal certificate but since the register is filled in by his father’s hand and he was to perform the ceremony, one would think it unlikely that a mistake would have been made in this case. Slobodin is correct to note that there is a mistake on the registry of his birth but since his name was changed from the mistaken ‘William False Rivers Rivers’ to its later form, it seems probable that ‘Rivers’ was intended to appear as a given name as well as a surname.

Rivers suffered from a stammer that never truly left him, he also had no sensory memory although he was able to visualise to an extent if dreaming, in a half-waking, half-sleeping state or when feverish. This had not always been the case; Rivers notes that in his early life- specifically before the age of five- his visual imagery was far more definite than it became in later life and perhaps as good as that of the average child. At first, Rivers had concluded that his loss of visual imagery had come about as a result of his lack of attention and interest in it. However, as he later came to realise, while images from his later life frequently faded into obscurity, those from his infancy still remained vivid.

As Rivers notes in Instinct and the Unconscious, one manifestation of his lack of visual memory was his inability to visualise any part of the upper floor of the house he lived in until he was five. This visual blank is made even more significant by the fact that Rivers was able to describe the lower floors of that particular house with far more accuracy than he had been able to with any house since and, although images of later houses were faded and incomplete, no memory since had been as inaccessible as that of the upper floor of his early home. With the evidence that he was presented with, Rivers was led to the conclusion that something had happened to him on the upper floor of that house, the memory of which was entirely suppressed because it ‘interfered with [his] comfort and happiness’. Indeed, not only was that specific memory rendered inaccessible but his sensory memory in general appears to have been severely handicapped from that moment.

If Rivers ever did come to access the veiled memory then he does not appear to make a note of it so the nature of the experience is open to conjecture. One such supposition was put forward by Pat Barker, in the third novel in her Regeneration Trilogy, The Ghost Road. Whatever the case, in the words of Barker's character Billy Prior, Rivers’ experience was traumatic enough to cause him to "put his mind's eye out".

Whatever his disadvantages, Rivers was an unquestionably able child. Educated first at a Brighton preparatory school and then, from the age of thirteen, as a dayboy at the prestigious Tonbridge School, his academic abilities were noted from an early age. Young Rivers’ talents led to him being placed a year above others of his age at school and even within this older group he was seen to excel, winning prizes for Classics and all around attainment. It is also worth noting that Rivers’ younger brother Charles was also a high achiever at the school; he too was awarded with the ‘Good Work’ prize and would go on to become a civil engineer until, after a bad bought of malaria contracted whilst in the Torres Straits with his brother, he was prompted by the elder Rivers to take up outdoor work.

The teenage Rivers, whilst obviously scholarly, was also involved in other aspects of school life. As the programme for the Tonbridge School sports day notes, on the 12th March 1880- Rivers’ sixteenth birthday- he ran in the mile race. The year before this he had been elected as a member of the school debating society, no mean feat for a boy who at this time suffered from a speech impediment which was almost paralytic.

Rivers was set to follow family tradition and take his University of Cambridge entrance exam, possibly with the aim of studying Classics. Unfortunately, his plans were thwarted when, at the age of sixteen, he was struck down by typhoid fever and forced to miss his final year of school.  Without the scholarship, his family could not afford to send him to Cambridge but with typical resilience, Rivers did not dwell on the disappointment. 

His illness had been a bad one, entailing long convalescence and leaving him with effects which at times severely handicapped him. As L.E Shore notes: “he was not a strong man, and was often obliged to take a few days rest in bed and subsist on a milk diet”. The severity of the sickness and the shattering of dreams might have broken lesser men but for Rivers in many ways the illness was the making of him. Whilst recovering from the fever, Rivers had formed a friendship with one of his father’s speech therapy students, a young Army surgeon. His plan was formed: he would study medicine and apply for training in the Army Medical Department, later to become the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Fuelled by this new resolve, Rivers studied medicine at the University of London, where he matriculated in 1882, and St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He graduated aged just 22, the youngest person to do so until recent times.

Life as a ship's surgeon

After qualifying, Rivers sought to join the Royal Army Medical Corps but was not passed fit- as Elliot Smith was later to write, as quoted in Rivers' biography:

Rivers always had to fight against ill health: heart and blood vessels.

He had been slow to recover from his fever and, along with the health problems, had been left to the curse of "tiring easily". His sister Katharine wrote that when he came to visit the family he would often sleep for the first day or two. Astonishingly, considering the work that Rivers did in his relatively short lifetime, Seligman wrote in 1922 that "for many years he seldom worked for more than four hours a day". As Rivers' biographer Richard Slobodin points out:

Among persons of extraordinary achievement, only Descartes seems to have put in as short a working day

Instead of entering the army, his love of travelling lead him to serve several terms as a ship's surgeon, travelling to Japan and North America in 1887. Such voyages helped to improve his health. On one voyage, he spent a month in the company of George Bernard Shaw “many hours every day talking - the greatest treat of my life”.

Beginnings of psychological career

Back in England, Rivers became house surgeon at Chichester Infirmary (1887–9) and house physician at St Bartholomew's (1889–90). In 1891 he joined the Neurological Society and became house physician at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic. Here he met John Hughlings Jackson, Michael Foster, Henry Head, and Charles S. Sherrington. He also worked with Victor Horsley on investigations into the existence and nature of electrical currents in the mammalian brain, conducted at University College, London (UCL).

Rivers resigned from the National Hospital in 1892 and travelled to Jena where he worked with Ewald Hering. During his visit he wrote in his diary:

I have during the last three weeks come to the conclusion that I should go in for insanity when I return to England and work as much as possible at psychology.

On his return he was appointed clinical assistant at Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the next year assisted G. H. Savage on his lectures on mental diseases at Guy's Hospital. About this time he also began to lecture on experimental psychology at UCL. By 1893 Rivers was teaching physiology at Cambridge and spent that summer working in Heidelberg with Emil Kräpelin on measuring the effects of fatigue.

He accepted a post as lecturer in psychology at St John's College in 1897 (he was elected a fellow in 1902). In 1907 he was appointed to the newly established lectureship of physiology and experimental psychology and made director of the university's new psychology laboratory, the first of its kind in Great Britain.

Torres Straits expedition

In addition to his psychological work, Rivers joined the university's expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898, organised by his close friend Alfred Cort Haddon. He had been reluctant to join at first, never having been interested in anthropology before; he had previously gone as far as to decline the invitation to own his uncle's old anthropology library. After what Haddon described as his 'seduction' of Rivers to anthropology, he joined, and thrived upon the trip. However, the expedition had seemed doomed to fail before it had started; on the ship the members were too sea sick to move with Rivers and Ray both having the added discomfort of badly sunburnt legs- Rivers' skin went black around the shins and he was unable to move. In addition, the ship dragged anchor in the dangerous waters around the Straits and the situation seemed dire for a time. When they finally arrived, Rivers was too ill to leave the ship for several days but when he did, sick and miserable, the natives of the island made up for it at once with their warm attitudes. He performed some of the first experiments in cross-cultural psychology and also developed the genealogical method as a key to the study of social organization.

The Cambridge scientists (Haddon, Rivers, Myers, McDougall, Seligman and Ray) spent almost eight months working in the different islands of the Torres Straits. They conducted tests; they interviewed native subjects; and they collected information on local customs and practises.

(The Ethnographer's Eye)

He then spent several months during 1901–2 among the Toda people of south-west India. The resulting monograph, The Todas (1906), set new standards of ethnological accuracy. In the following years he began to propound diffusionism, the doctrine that cultural traits were not independently invented but carried from one area to another. Despite his love of adventure and his obvious intellect, Rivers was still an extremely shy young man at this point:

In the Cambridge physiological laboratory he had to lecture to a large elementary class. He was rather nervous about it, and did not like it. This was partly owing to a hesitation of speech, which at times was quite embarrassing when he was speaking without notes. So he wrote out his lectures pretty fully... As a result many of his thoughts are preserved for us which would otherwise be lost

(L.E Shaw, physiologist friend of Rivers and his neighbour at St. John's for many years).

His experiences both at home and abroad increased his interests in the relationship between mind and body, and he played a fundamental role in the establishment of both experimental psychology and social anthropology as academic disciplines in Britain. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1908 and won the Society's gold medal in 1914 (information obtained from Rivers fonds)

Experiments with Henry Head

In 1903, Rivers' embarked on one of his most famous experiments, carried out with (and on) his close friend Dr Henry Head to study the regeneration of nerve tissue. Head severed two of the cutaneous nerves in his left forearm and sutured the ends together. He and Rivers then spent four years mapping the recovery of sensory perception in Head's arm. The experiment reinforced beliefs that ‘civilized’ man retains underneath an evolutionary primitive nervous system. His slightly later work on the influence of alcohol and caffeine on fatigue was also one of the first experiments to rely on a double-blind procedure.

For five happy years we worked together on weekends and holidays in the quiet atmosphere of (Rivers’) rooms in St John’s College

(Head 1923)

Although Rivers was the investigator in this experiment, he was survived by Head who came to publish their work and is, therefore, given a great deal of the credit that is, perhaps, due to Rivers. Rivers was to work closely with Henry again during the latter part of the war when he was appointed psychologist to the Royal Flying Corps, attached to the Central Hospital in Hampstead.

Pre-war psychological work

In 1904, with Professor James Ward and some others, Rivers founded the British Journal of Psychology of which he was at first joint editor.

From 1908 till the outbreak of the war Dr. Rivers was mainly preoccupied with ethnological and sociological problems. Already he had relinquished his official post as Lecturer in Experimental Psychology in favour of Dr. Charles Samuel Myers, and now held only a lectureship on the physiology of the special senses. By degrees he became more absorbed in anthropological research. But though he was now ethnologist rather than psychologist he always maintained that what was of value in his work was due directly to his training in the psychological laboratory. In the laboratory he had learnt the importance of exact method; in the field he now gained vigor and vitality by his constant contact with the actual daily behaviour of human beings.

During 1907–8 Rivers travelled to the Solomon Islands, and other areas of Melanesia and Polynesia. His two-volume History of Melanesian Society (1914) presented a diffusionist thesis for the development of culture in the south-west Pacific. In the year of publication he made a second journey to Melanesia, returning to England in March 1915, to find that war had broken out.

World War One

During the war, he worked as a RAMC captain at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he applied techniques of psychoanalysis to British officers suffering from various forms of neurosis brought on by their war experiences.

Rivers, by pursuing a course of humane treatment, had established two principles that would be embraced by American military psychiatrists in the next war. He had demonstrated, first, that men of unquestioned bravery could succumb to overwhelming fear and, second, that the most effective motivation to overcome that fear was something stronger than patriotism, abstract principles, or hatred of the enemy. It was the love of soldiers for one another.

W. H. R. Rivers outside Craiglockhart.

Rivers' methods are often, somewhat unfairly, said to have stemmed from Sigmund Freud (essays such as Freud and the War Neuroses: Pat Barker's "Regeneration" gladly compare the two) however, this is not truly the case as you can read both in Barker's novels and in the words of friends such as Myers. Although he was aware of Freud's theories and methods, he did not necessarily subscribe to them. (See Regeneration pp 28-32, Penguin Books for his interpretation on dreams. See also Rivers' Conflict and Dream for his methods of dream analysis and his thoughts on Freud.) While he 'admitted', as Myers describes, 'the conflict of social factors with the sexual instincts in certain psychoneuroses' of civilian life, he saw the instinct of self-preservation rather than the sexual instinct, as the driving force behind war neuroses. Therefore he formed his 'talking cure', not on the basis that soldiers were repressing sexual urges, but rather their fear pertaining to their war experiences. As such, he really is a pioneer in his field - both for his new methods and for the fact that he went against the grain of the beliefs of the time (Shell shock was not considered a 'real' illness and 'cures' mainly involved electric shock, with doctors such as Lewis Yealland were particularly keen on this form of 'treatment'). Rivers' treatment also went against the grain of the society in which he had been brought up - he did not advocate the traditional 'stiff upper-lip' approach but rather told his patients to express their emotions.

Sassoon came to him in 1917 after publicly protesting against the war and refusing to return to his regiment, but was treated with sympathy and given much leeway until he voluntarily returned to France. For Rivers, there was a considerable dilemma involved in 'curing' his patients simply in order that they could be sent back to the Western Front to die. Rivers' feelings of guilt are clearly portrayed both in fiction and in fact. Through Pat Barker's novels and in Rivers' works (particularly Conflict and Dream) we get a sense of the turmoil the doctor went through. As Sassoon wrote in a letter to Robert Graves (24th July 1918):

O Rivers please take me. And make me
Go back to the war til it break me...

He did not wish to 'break' his patients but at the same time he knew that it was their duty to return to the front and his duty to send them. There is also an implication (given the pun on Rivers' name along with other factors) that Rivers was more to Sassoon than just a friend, as he called him, 'father confessor', a point that Jean Moorcroft Wilson picks up on in her biography of Sassoon, however Rivers' tight morals would have probably prevented such a relationship from progressing:

Rivers’ uniform was not the only constraint in their relationship. He was almost certainly homosexual by inclination and it must quickly have become clear to him that Sassoon was too. Yet neither is likely to have referred to it, though we know that Sassoon was already finding his sexuality a problem. At the same time, as an experienced psychologist Rivers could reasonably expect Sassoon to experience ‘transference’ and become extremely fond of him. Paul Fussell suggests in The Great War and Modern Memory(ISBN 0195019180) that Rivers became the embodiment of the male ‘dream friend’ who had been the companion of Sassoon’s boyhood fantasies. Sassoon publicly acknowledged that ‘there was never any doubt about my liking [Rivers]. He made me feel safe at once, and seemed to know all about me’. But Sassoon’s description of the doctor in 'Sherston’s Progress', lingering as it does on Rivers’s warm smile and endearing habits- he often sat, spectacles pushed up on forehead, with his hands clasped around one knee- suggests that it was more than liking he felt. And privately he was rather franker, telling Marsh, whom he knew would understand, that he ‘loved [Rivers] at first sight.’

Not only Sassoon, but his patients as a whole, loved him and his colleague Frederic Bartlett wrote of him

Rivers was intolerant and sympathetic. He was once compared to Moses laying down the law. The comparison was an apt one, and one side of the truth. The other side of him was his sympathy. It was a sort of power of getting into another man's life and treating it as if it were his own. And yet all the time he made you feel that your life was your own to guide, and above everything that you could if you cared make something important out of it.

Sassoon described Rivers' bedside manner in his letter to Graves, written as he lay in hospital after being shot (a head wound that he had hoped would kill him- he was bitterly disappointed when it didn't):

But yesterday my reasoning Rivers ran solemnly in,
With peace in the pools of his spectacled eyes and a wisely omnipotent grin;
And I fished in that steady grey stream and decided that I
after all am no longer the Worm that refuses to die.

He was well known for his compassionate, effective and pioneering treatments; as Sassoon's testimony reveals, he treated his patients very much as individuals. Rivers published the results of his experimental treatment of patients at Craiglockhart in a The Lancet paper 'On the Repression of War Experience' and began to record interesting cases in his book 'Conflict and Dream' which was published a year after his death by his close friend Grafton Elliot Smith.

Post war

After the war, Rivers became "another and far happier man - diffidence gave place to confidence, reticence to outspokenness, a somewhat laboured literary style to one remarkable for ease and charm". He is quoted as saying

I have finished my serious work and I shall just let myself go.

In those post war years, his personality seemed to change dramatically. The man who had been most at home in his study, the laboratory, or the field now dined out a good deal, had joined clubs, went yachting and appeared to welcome rather than shun opportunities for public speaking. Always having been a voracious reader, he now began reading in philosophy, as he had not done for some years, and also in imaginative literature. Not all of his friends from former years welcomed these changes; some felt that, along with his shyness, his scientific caution and good sense may have deserted him to a degree but most people who saw how happy Rivers had become agreed that the slight alterations to his character were for the better. Rivers had visited his college frequently during the war although, having resigned his position as lecturer, he held no official post. However, upon his return from the Royal Flying Corps in 1919, the college created a new office for him- 'Praelector of Natural Science Studies - and he was given a free rein to do as he pleased. As Leonard E. Shore recalled in 1923:

when I asked him if he would undertake that work... his eyes shone with a new light I had not seen before, and he paced his rooms for several minutes full of delight.

He took his new position to be a mandate to get to know every science student and indeed every other student at St. Johns and at other colleges. He would arrange 'At Homes' in his rooms on Sunday evenings, as well as Sunday morning breakfast meetings; he also organised informal discussions and formal lectures (many of which he gave himself) in the College Hall. He formed a group called The Socratics and brought to it some of his most influential friends, including H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Bertrand Russell and Sassoon. Sassoon (Patient B in 'Conflict and Dream'), remained particularly friendly with Rivers and regarded him as a mentor. They shared Socialist sympathies.

Captain W. H. R. Rivers RAMC

Having already been made president of the anthropological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1911, after the war he became president of the English Folk-Lore Society (1920), and the Royal Anthropological Institute (1921-1922). He was also awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Manchester, St. Andrews and Cambridge in 1919.

Rivers died of a strangulated hernia in the summer of 1922, shortly after being named as a Labour candidate for the 1922 general election. He had agreed to run for parliament, as he said:

because the times are so ominous, the outlook for our own country and the world so black, that if others think I can be of service in political life, I cannot refuse.

— [1]

He had been taken ill suddenly in his rooms at St John's on the evening of Friday 3rd June, having sent his servant home to enjoy the summer festivities. By the time he was found in the morning, it was too late and he knew it. Typically for this man who, throughout his life "displayed a complete disregard for personal gain, he was selfless to the last. There is a document granting approval for the diploma in anthropology to be awarded as of Easter term, 1922, to an undergraduate student from India. It is signed by Haddon and Rivers dated 4th June, 1922. At the bottom is a notation in Haddon's handwriting:

Dr. Rivers signed the report on this examination on the morning of the day he died. It was his last official act. A.C.H

Rivers signed the papers as he lay dying in the Evelyn Nursing Home following an unsuccessful emergency operation. He had an extravagant funeral at St. John's in accordance with his wishes as he was an expert on funeral rites and was put to rest in All Souls Burial Ground, formerly the chuchyard of St Giles Church, Cambridge. Sassoon was deeply saddened by the death of his father figure and collapsed at his funeral. His loss prompted him to write two poignant poems about the man he had grown to love: "To A Very Wise Man" and "Revisitation"[2].

Others' opinions of Rivers

Poetry

In the poem The Red Ribbon Dream, written by Robert Graves not long after Rivers' death, he touches on the peace and security he felt in Rivers' rooms:

For that was the place where I longed to be

And past all hope where the kind lamp shone.

An anonymously written poem Anthropological Thoughts can be found in the Rivers collection of the Haddon archives at Cambridge. There is a reference that indicates that these lines were written by Charles Elliot Fox, missionary and ethnographer friend of Rivers.

Quotes

In Sassoon's autobiography (under the guise of 'The Memoirs of George Sherston') Rivers is one of the few characters to retain their original names. There is a whole chapter devoted to Rivers and he is immortalised by Sassoon as a near demi-god who saved his life and his soul. Sassoon wrote:

I very much like to meet Rivers in the next life. It is difficult to believe that such a man as he could be extinguished.

— preface to Medicine, Magic and Religion

Rivers was much loved and admired, not just by Sassoon. Bartlett wrote of his experiences of Rivers in one of his obituaries, as well as in many other articles (see 'References') as the man had a profound influence on his life:

On June 3 last year I was walking through the grounds of St. John's College, here in Cambridge, when I met Dr. Rivers returning from a stroll. He was full of energy and enthusiasm, and began at once to talk about certain new courses of lectures which he proposed to deliver at the Psychological Laboratory during the present year. On the evening of the next day I heard that he was dangerously ill. As I approached the College on the morning of June 5 I saw the flag at half mast. He had, in fact, died in the early afternoon of the preceding day. Never have I known so deep a gloom settle upon the College as fell upon it at that time. There was hardly a man-young or old-who did not seem to be intimately and personally affected. Rivers knew nearly everybody. As Praelector of Natural Sciences at St. John's he interviewed all the science freshmen when they came first into residence and, in an amazing number of cases, he kept in close touch with them throughout their Cambridge career. Everybody who came into contact with him was stimulated and helped to a degree which those who are acquainted only with his published works can never fully realise... it is of Rivers as a man that we think; of his eager and unconquerable optimism, and of his belief in the possible greatness of all things human. Whatever may be the verdict of the years upon his published works, the influence of his vivid personality will remain for all who knew him as one of the best things that have ever entered their lives.

Rivers' legacy continues even today in the form of The Rivers Centre, which treats patients suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder using the same famously humane methods as Rivers had. There is also a Rivers Memorial Medal, founded in 1923, which is rewarded each year to an anthropologist who has made a significant impact in his or her field. Appropriately, Haddon was the first to receive this award in 1924.

Bibliography of Rivers's works

1888

• A case of spasm of the muscles of the neck causing protrusion of the head (St. Bart's Hospital Reports, 24, pp. 249-51)

1889

• Abstract of a paper on 'Delirium and its allied conditions', read before the Abernethian Society (St. Bart's Hospital Reports, 25, pp. 279-80)

1891

• A case of treadler's cramp (Brain, 24, pp. 110-11)
• Abstract of paper on 'Hysteria', read before the Abernethian Society (St. Bart's Hospital Reports, 27, pp. 285-6)

1893

• Abstract of paper on 'Neurasthenia', read before the Abernethian Society (St. Bart's Hospital Reports, 29, p. 350)

1894

• A Modification of Aristotle's Experiment (Mind, New Series, Vol. 3, No. 12, Oct., 1894, pp. 583-584)
• Review of O. Külpe's 'Grundriss d. Psychologie auf experimenteller Grundlage dargestellt' (Mind, New Series, 3, pp. 413-17)

1895

• Review of H. Maudsley's 'Pathology of Mind', and E. Kräpelin's 'Psychologische Arbeiten' (Mind, New Series, 4, pp. 400-3)
• Paper on 'Experimental psychology in relation to insanity', read before the Medico-Psychol. Soc. G.B & I. (Abstract in Lancet, 73, p. 867)
• Review of T. Zichen's 'Psychiatrie f. Aertze und Studierende' (Brain, 18, pp. 418-21)
• On binocular colour mixture (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophy Society, 8, pt. 5, pp. 273-7)
• On the apparent size of objects (Mind, New Series, Vol. 5, No. 17, Jan., 1896, pp. 71-80)

1896

• 'Observations on mental fatigue and recovery', paper read before the Medico-Psychol. Soc. G.B & I. (Abstract in Lancet, 74, p. 711)
• On mental fatigue and recovery (Journal of Mental Science, 42, pp. 525-9)
• Über Ermüdung und Erholung, with E. Kräpelin (Psychol. Arbeit, 1, pp. 627-78)

1897

• The photometry of coloured paper (Journal of Physiology, 22, pp. 137-45)

1899

• Contributions to comparative psychology from the Torres Straits and New Guinea (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1899, p. 486, and Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, New Series, 2, pp. 219-222) (With W. McDougall and C.S Myers)
• Two new departures in anthropological method (Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, pp. 789-90)

1900

• The senses of primitive man (Abstract in Science, New Series, 11, pp. 740-1, and trans. 'Über die Sinne d. primitiven Menschen'in Umschau, 25)
• 'Textbook of physiology', 6th ed. revd., Part IV., 'The Senses', by Sir M. Foster assisted by W. H. R. Rivers
• Article on 'Vision', in Schäfer's 'Text-book of physiology'
• A genealogical method of collecting social and vital statistics (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 30, pp. 74-82)
• Report of Committee on mental and physical deviations from the normal among children in... schools (with others). (Rep. Brit. Ass., 1900, pp. 461-6)

1901

• The measurement of visual illusion (Rep. Brit. Ass., 1901, p. 818)
• Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. II., Physiology and Psychology, pt. I., Introductory, and Visin, pp. vi., 140. Cambridge
• On erythropsia (Trans. Ophthal. Soc. Lond., XXI., pp. 296-305)
• Primitive orientation (Folk-Lore, XII., pp. 210-12)
• The colour vision of the Eskimo (Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc., XI., pp. 143-9)
• Primitive colour vision R. Inst. Lect. (Pop. Sci. Mthly., LIX., pp. 44-58)
• Review of W.A. Nagel's 'Farbensinn d. Tiere' (Brain, XXIV., pp. 663-4)
• Review of A. Lehmann's 'Körperliche Äusserungen psychischer Zustände' (Mind, N.S., X., pp. 402-4)
• The colour vision of the natives of Upper Egypt (J.A.I., XXXI., pp. 229-47)
• Colour vision: reviwes of Holden and Bosse's 'The order of development of colour perception and of colour preference in the child' (Man, I., pp. 107-9)
• On the function of the maternal uncle in Torres Straits (Man, Vol. 1, 1901, pp. 171-172)
• On the functions of the son-in-law and brother-in-law in Torres Straits (Man, Vol. 1, 1901, p. 172)

1902

• Report of Committee on pigmentation survet of the schoolchildren of Scotland (with others) (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1902, pp. 352-3; 1903, p. 415)
• Note on the sister's son in Samoa (Folk-Lore, XIII., p.199)

1903

• Observations on the vision of the Uralis and Sholagas (Madras Govt. Mus. Bull., V., pp. 1-16)
• Toda Kinship and Marriage; the Toda dairy (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1903, PP. 810-12)
• The psychology and sociology of the Todas and the tribes of Southern India (Rep. Brit. Assoc., LXXIII., pp. 415-16)
• The funeral of Sunerani (Eagle, XXIV., pp. 337-43)

1904

• Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V: Genealogical tables; Kinship; Totemism (with A.C Haddon); The regulation of marriage; Personal names
• Note on R. C. Punnett's 'On the proportion of the sexes among the Todas' (Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc., XII., pp. 487-8)
• Toda prayer (Folk-Lore, XV., pp. 166-81)
• Some funeral customs of the Todas; On the senses of the Todas *Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1904, PP. 726, 749-50)
• Investigations of the comparative visual acuity of savages and of civilised people (Brit. Med. J., 1904, II., p. 1297)
• 'Acuité visuelle des peuples civillisées et des sauvages' (Ann. d'Oeul., CXXXII., pp. 455- )

1905

• Observations on the senses of the Todas (Brit. J. of Psych., I., pp. 321-96)
• The afferent nervous system from a new aspect; with H. Head and J. Sherren (Brain, XXVIII., pp. 99-115)

1906

• The Todas. Map, illus., 22cm. London
• Demonstration of new apparatus for psychological tests (Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc., XIII., p. 392)
• Report on the psychology and sociology of the Todas and other Indian tribes (Proc. Roy. Soc. B., 77, pp. 239-41)
• The astronomy of Torres Straits Islanders; A survival of twofold origin (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1906, pp. 701-2)

1907

• The marriage of cousins in India (J. R. Asiatic Soc., PP. 611-40)
• Report of a Sub-Committee appointed to advise on the publication of a new edition of 'Notes and Queries on Anthropology' (with others)
• The action of caffeine on the capacity for muscular work (Journ. Physiol., XXXVI., pp. 34-47)
• Review of Sex and Society by W. I. Thomas (Man, Vol. 7, 1907, pp. 111-111)
• On the origin of the classificatory system of relationships (Anthrop. Essays pres. to E.B Taylor, pp. 309-23. Oxford)
• Report of Committee on anthropometric investigation in the British Isles (with others) (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1907, pp. 354-68)
• Morgan's Malayan system of relationship; Some sociological definitions (Rep. Brit. Assoc., LXXVII., p. 640, and pp. 653-5)
• Review of C.F Jayne's 'String Figures' (Folk-Lore, XVIII., pp. 112-16)

1908

• Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. VI (Eastern Islanders): Genealogies; Kinship; Personal names; The regulation of marriage; Social organisation
• The influence on alcohol and other drugs on fatigue (Croonian Lects., R. Coll. Physicians, 1906). London: E. Arnold, pp. 144
• A human experiment in nerve division (with H. Head) (Brain, XXXI., pp. 323-450)
• The illusion of compared horizontal and verticle lines (with G.D. Hicks), and The influence of small doses of alcohol on the capacity for muscular work (with H.N. Webber) (Brit. J. of Psychol., II., pp. 252-5)

1909

• Review of B. Thomson's 'The Fijians' (Folk-Lore, XX., pp. 252-5)
• 'Some notes on magical practices in the Banks' Islands,' a paper read before the Folklore Soc. (Folk-Lore, XXI., p. 2)
• Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia (J.R.A.I, XXXIX., pp. 156-80)

1910

• The genealogical method of anthropological inquiry (Sociol. Review, III, pp. 1-12)
• French translation of the above (Rev. d'Ethnogr. & de Sociol., Paris)
• The father's sister in Oceania (Folk-Lore, XXI., pp. 42-59)
• Report of Committee on establishment of a system of measuring mental characters (with others) (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1910, p. 267)
• Kava-drinking in Melanesia (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1910, p. 734)
• The Solomon Island basket (with Mrs. A. H. Quiggin) (Man, X., pp. 161-3)

1911

• The ethnological analysis of culture (Pres. Address to Section H. Brit. Assoc.) (Science, XXXIV., pp. 385-97; Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1911, pp. 490-9; Nature, LXXXVII., p. 356)
• Report of Committee on mental and physical factors involved in education (with others) (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1911, pp. 177-214; 1912, pp. 327-38; 1913, pp. 302-5)

1912

• Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. IV. Astronomy
• The disappearance of useful arts (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1912, pp. 598-9)
• Island names in Melanesia (Geog. Jorn., pp. 458-68)
• Conventionalism in primitive art (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1912, p. 599)
• The socioloical significance of myth (Folk-Lore, XXIII., pp. 307-331)
• The primitive conception of death (Hibbert J., X., pp. 393-407)
• Obituary notice of Andrew Lang (Folk-Lore, XXIII., pp. 367-71)
• Articles on Methodology, Marriage, Relationship, Poperty and Inheritance in Part III., Sociology, of 'Notes and Queries on Anthropology,' 4th ed.

1913

• Survival in sociology (Sociol. Rev., VI., pp. 293-305)
• Report on anthropological research outside America (Carnegie Inst. of Washington publns., 200)
• A gypsy pedigree and its lessons (with G. Hall) (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1913, p. 625)
• Massage in Melanesia (paper read at the 17th Internat. Congress of Medicine, sect. xxiii., pp. 39-42. Lond.)
• The bow in New Ireland (Man. XIII., p. 54)
• The contact of peoples (essays to W. Ridgeway, pp. 474-92. Cambridge)
• Sun-cult and megaliths in Oceania; R. Inst. lect. (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1913, p. 634, and Amer. Anthrop., N.S., XVII., pp. 431-45)

1914

• Notes on the Heron pedigree (Gypsy Lore Soc., VII., 88-104)
• The History of Melanesian society (Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia, 2 cols. Cambridge)
• Kinship and social organisation (Studies in Economic and Political Science, No. 36)
• Kin, Kinship (Hastings' 'Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,' VII., pp. 700-7)
• Is Australian culture simple or complex? Gerontocracy and marriage in Australia (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1914, pp. 529-32)

1915

• Descent and ceremonial in Ambrim (J.R.A.I., XLV., pp. 229-33)
• Review of Prof. G. Elliot Smith's 'The migrations of early culture' (J. Egyptian Archaeol., II, pp. 256-7)
• The boomerang in the New Hebrides (Man, Vol. 15, 1915, pp. 106-108)
• Melanesian gerontocracy (Man, XV., pp. 145-7)
• Marriage (Introductory and Primitive); Mother-right (in Hastings' 'Enc. Religion and Ethics,' VIII., pp. 423-32, 851-9)

1916

• Medicine, Magic and Religion- book published 1923 (Fitzpatrick Lects. 1915) (originally published in stages. Lancet XCIV., pp. 59-65, 117-23)
• Irrigation and the cultivation of taro (Nature, XCVII., p.514, and Abst. in Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc. Mem. and Proc., LX., pp. xliv.-v., 1917)
• Sociology and psychology (Sociol. Rev., IX., pp. 1-13)

1917

• Freud's psychology of the unconscious. Paper read at the Edinburgh Pathological Club, Mar. 7, 1917 (Lancet, XCV., pp. 912-14)
• A case of claustrophobia (Lancet, XCV., pp. 237-40)
• Medicine, Magic and Religion (Lancet, XCV., pp. 919-23, 959-64)
• New Britain, New Ireland, New Caledonia, New Hebrides (Hastings' 'Enc. Religion and Ethics,' IX., pp. 336-9, 352-5)
• Dreams and primitive culture (Bull. J, Rylands Library, IV)
• The government of subject peoples ('Science and the Nation,' ed. A.C Seward, pp. 302-328)

1918

• The Repression of War Experience (Lancet, XCVI., pp. 513-33)
• Maori burial chests (Man, XCIII., p. 97)
• Why is the 'unconscious' unconscious? (Brit. J. Psychol., IX., pt. 2, pp. 236-46)

1919

• Psychology and medicine (Pres. Address Medical Section, Brit. Psychol. Soc.) (Lancet, XCVII., pp. 889-92)
• Mind and medicine (Bull. J. Rylands Library, V.)
• Psychiatry and the War (Science, New Series, Vol. 49, No. 1268 (Apr. 18, 1919), pp. 367-369)
• Review of C. Wissler's 'The American Indian' (Man, XIX, pp. 75-6)
• Psychology and the War; Pres. address to Brit. Assoc., Sub-Section Psychology (Rep. Brit. Assoc., 1919, p. 313)

1920

• Studies in neurology (with H. Head and others) Oxford Medical publns. 2 vols.
• Anthropology and the missionary (Church Missionary Review, Sept.)
• Instinct and the Unconscious 1st edit. Cambridge
• The dying out of native races; Lect. at R. Inst. Public Health, May, 1918(Lancet, 98, pp. 42-4, 109-11)
• The concept of soul-substance in New Guinea and Melanesia (Folklore, 31, pp. 48-69)
• Freud's conception of the censorship (Psycho-analytic Revue, 7, p. 3)
• History and ethnology (History, New Series, 5, pp. 65-80)
• Ships and boats; Solomon Islands (Hastings' 'Enc. Religion and Ethics,' 11, pp. 471-4, 680-5)
• Review of Mrs. Scoresby Routledge's 'The mystery of Easter Island' (Folklore, XXXI., pp. 82-7)
• Review of R.H Lowie's 'Primitive Society' (American Anthropologist, XXII., pp. 278-83)
• The statues of Easter Island (Folklore, 31, pp. 294-306)
• Instinct and the unconscious (British Journal of Psychology, 10, pp. 1-7)
• Psychology and medicine (British Journal of Psychology, 10, pp. 183-93)

1921

• The origin of hypergamy (J. Bihar and Orissa Research Soc., Patna, 7, pp. 9-24)
• Conservatism and plasticity; Pres. Address to the Folk-Lore Soc. (Folklore, 32, pp. 10-27)
• Affect in the dream (British Journal of Psychology, 12, pp. 113-24)
• Kinship and marriage in India (Man in India, 1, pp. 6-10)
• The Todas (Hastings' 'Encyc, Religion and Ethics,' 12., pp. 354-7)

1922

• Instinct and the unconscious. 2nd edit. Cambridge
• Psycho-neurotic symptoms associated with miners' nystagmus (Medical Research Council: Special Report Series, 65, pp. 60-64)
• Methods of dream analysis (Brit Journal of Psychology, Medical Section II., pt. 2, pp. 101-108)
• The symbolism of rebirth; Pres. Address to Folk-Lore Soc. (Folklore, 33, pp. 14-33)

1922 (posthumous)

• The psychological factor (Essays on the depopulation of Melanesia, ed. W.H.R.R., pp. 83- Cambridge)
• History and Ethnology, with bibliography (Helps for Students of History, No. 48, S.P.C.K., Lond.)
• The relation of complex and sentiment (British Journal of Psychology, 13)

1923

• Conflict and Dream (edit. G. Elliot Smith). London
• Psychology and Politics (edit. G. Elliot Smith). London

1924

• Social Organisation (edit. by W. J. Perry). London

1926

• Psychology and Ethnology (edit. G. Elliot Smith). London

In fiction

He was a very humane, a very compassionate person who was tormented really by the suffering he saw, and very sceptical about the war, but at the same time he didn't feel he could go the whole way and say no, stop.

(Pat Barker)

Sassoon writes about Rivers in the third part of The Memoirs of George Sherston, Sherston's Progress. There is a chapter named after the doctor and Rivers appears in both books as the only character to retain his factual name, giving him a position as a sort of demi-god in Sassoon's semi-fictitious memoirs.

The life of W. H. R. Rivers and his encounter with Sassoon was fictionalised by Pat Barker in the Regeneration Trilogy, a series of three books including Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995). The trilogy was greeted with considerable acclaim, with The Ghost Road being awarded the Booker Prize in the year of its publication. Regeneration was filmed in 1997 with Jonathan Pryce in the role of Rivers.

The first book, Regeneration deals primarily with Rivers' treatment of Sassoon at Craiglockhart. In the novel we are introduced to Rivers as a doctor for whom healing patients comes at price. The dilemmas faced by Rivers are brought to the fore and the strain leads him to become ill; on sick leave he visits his brother and the Heads and we learn more about his relationships outside of hospital life. We are also introduced in the course of the novel to the Canadian doctor Lewis Yealland, another factual figure who used electric shock treatment to 'cure' his patients. The juxtaposition of the two very different doctors highlights the unique, or at least unconventional, nature of Rivers' methods and the humane way in which he treated his patients (even though Yealland's words, and his own guilt and modesty lead him to think otherwise).

The Eye in the Door concentrates, for the most part, on Rivers' treatment of the fictional character of Prior. Although Prior's character might not have existed, the facts that he makes Rivers face up to did- that something happened to him on the first floor of his house that caused him to block all visual memory and begin to stammer. We also learn of Rivers' treatment of officers in the airforce and of his work with Head. Sassoon too plays a role in the book- Rivers visits him in hospital where he finds him to be a different, if not broken, man, his attempt at 'suicide' having failed. This second novel in the trilogy, both implicitly and directly, addresses the issue of Rivers' possible homosexuality and attraction to Sassoon. From Rivers' reaction to finding out that Sassoon is in hospital to the song playing in the background 'you made me love you' and Ruth Head's question to her husband "do you think he's in love with him?" we get a strong impression of the author's opinions on Rivers' sexuality.

The Ghost Road, the final part of the trilogy, shows a side of Rivers not previously seen in the novels. As well as showing his relationship with his sisters and father, we also learn of his feelings for Charles Dodgson- or Lewis Carroll. Carroll was the first adult Rivers met who stammered as badly as he did and yet he cruelly rejected him, preferring to lavish attention on his pretty young sisters. In this novel the reader also learns of Rivers' visit to Melenasia; feverish with Spanish Flu, the doctor is able to recount the expedition and we are provided with insight both into the culture of the island and into Rivers' very different 'field trip personae'.

External links

• W. H. R. Rivers: A Founding Father Worth Remembering
• 'Everything is Relatives: William Rivers'
• Cambridge Museum of Anthropology
• Counter-Attack biography
• The Rivers Centre
• Torres Straits Essay
• Colour Terms
• 'W H R Rivers and the hazards of interpretation'
• 'Cultures Under Siege'
• Historicism
• Viewing Notes for 'Everything is Relatives'
• Sound files from the Torres Straits
• 'The Ethnographer's Eye'