Robert Spencer Dyer
Lyons
Robert Spencer
Dyer Lyons MP (1826–1886), physician. Lyons, born at Cork in 1826,
was son of Sir William Lyons (1794–1858), a merchant there, who was
mayor in 1848 and 1849, and was knighted by the queen on her visit
to Cork on 3 August 1849. His mother was Harriet, daughter of Robert
Spencer Dyer of Kinsale. Robert was educated at Hamlin and Porter's
grammar school, Cork, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he
graduated in 1848 as a bachelor in medicine. He became a licentiate
of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in the following year,
and in 1855 was appointed chief pathological commissioner to the
British Army in the Crimea, where he reported on the disease then
prevalent in the trenches before Sebastopol. On 8 September 1855 he
was awarded the Crimean and Turkish medals and clasps for
Sebastopol.
In 1856, he
married Marie, daughter of David Richard Pigot, lord chief baron of
the exchequer in Ireland. In 1857 he undertook a voluntary mission
to Lisbon to investigate the pathological anatomy of the yellow
fever which was raging there, and for his report on that subject
received from King Pedro V of Portugal the cross and insignia of the
Ancient Order of Christ. He then joined St. George's Hospital,
Dublin, where he took an active share in the education of the army
medical staff. He was also professor of medicine in the Roman
catholic university medical school, a senator of the Royal
University, 1880, crown nominee for Ireland in the General Medical
Council of the United Kingdom on 29 November 1881, physician to the
House of Industry hospitals, and visiting physician to Maynooth
College.
In 1870 he was
invited by Mr. Gladstone's government to act on a commission of
inquiry into the treatment of Irish treason-felony prisoners in
English prisons, and in connection with this inquiry he visited many
French prisons and reported on the discipline exercised in that
country. He enthusiastically recommended the reafforesting of
Ireland, and with concurrence of government collected information on
forests from foreign countries, which was embodied in an article in
the Journal of Forestry and Estate Management, February 1883, pp.
656–9. He sat in the British House of Commons for the City of Dublin
as a liberal from April 1880 till the general election in 1885, and
spoke on the Parliamentary Oaths Act 1 May 1883. He died at 89
Merrion Square, Dublin, on 19 December 1886.
From: The
Dictionary of National Biography:
