Thomas Lambert (horticulturist)
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Thomas Lambert (3 December 1854 – 17 April 1944) was a New Zealand medical doctor, horticulturist, journalist and writer. He was born in Oughterard, County Galway in Ireland on 3 December 1854.[1]
Lambert was born in Oughterard, County Galway, to schoolmaster William Lambert, and former schoolteacher, Mary Jane Bingham. He was their eldest child. His father was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and taught his son the classics. He studied medical training at St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, for eighteen months as a surgeon, becoming skilled at obstetrics, dressing wounds, and setting bones. During his time at St. Vincent's he published articles in the London Medical Press and Circular.
Emigration to New Zealand
Before he could complete his training, Lambert's family moved to New Zealand, arriving on 4 October 1875 at Spit, Wairoa, where William Lambert was appointed the first Anglican clergyman. Mary Jane Lambert was forced to make home in a two-room whare with a dirt floor, where she previously had a large house with four indoor servants.
The Lamberts founded a tree nursery and Wairoa's first chemist shop. Thomas became the de facto medical practitioner, treating both Māori and Pākehā. In 1876, he became the local correspondent for a number of newspapers based in Hawke's Bay. In time he was appointed as editor of the Wairoa Free Press, Wairoa Guardian and East Coast Mail and Wairoa Gazette, served on several local committees, and was a regular activist for the Presbyterian church and the temperance movement. He also found time to judge at horticultural shows.
Thomas Lambert married Jessie Shears in Napier on 7 April 1886, with whom he had nine children (two were to die in infancy).
