William Ramsay Smith

William Ramsay Smith, usually called Ramsay Smith, was a Scottish physician, educator, naturalist, anthropologist and civil servant who lived from 1859 to 1937. Born to a farm servant in Aberdeenshire, he trained as a teacher and then studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he taught natural history, zoology and anatomy. In 1896 he moved to South Australia as physician and pathologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, and he became Adelaide city coroner, inspector of anatomy and chairman of the Central Board of Health. He identified an outbreak of bubonic plague in Adelaide in 1900 and oversaw plague administration at Cape Town during the South African War. His legacy is troubled: in 1903 he faced charges under the Anatomy Act for removing heads and skeletons, including the body of a Ngarrindjeri man named Tommy Walker, and he supplied hundreds of Aboriginal remains to Edinburgh University. A 1930 book published under his name was later credited to David Unaipon.