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Speechly/Stansfield Family fonds: Home

Speechly/Stansfield Family fonds

Speechly/Stansfield Family fonds

Call Number: Mss 53, Pc 75 (A.82-28)

Title: Speechly/Stansfield Family fonds.

Dates: 1899-1971.

Extent: 1.6 m of textual records. -- 1 photograph.

Biographical sketch: Dr. H.M. Speechly was born in Cochin, South India in 1866, son of an Episcopalian bishop. He was educated at Perse Grammar School, Cambridge, and at Monkton Combe School, Bath, England. In 1884, he began his medical course at London Hospital in 1884, graduating in 1889. He practised medicine at Parkgate, near Birkenhead, from 1893 until he came to Canada in 1901. He relocated to Pilot Mound, Manitoba, where he was a practising physician and coroner for more than a decade. In 1916, he went overseas for war service as a medical officer for which he received the Red Cross Medal and returned to Winnipeg in 1919 where he was coroner from 1929 to 1942. Dr. Speechly was a past president of the Manitoba Horticultural Society, the Boy Scouts Association, the Winnipeg Health League, and the Dominion Brotherhood of St. Andrew. For many years he directed the anti-mosquito campaigns in Winnipeg.

Custodial history: The fonds was donated to University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections by Dr. H.M. Speechley's eldest daughter, Margaret Stansfield, in 1982.

Scope and content: The fonds includes correspondence, photographs, published articles, notes, pamphlets, memorabilia, and an unpublished autobiography of a prominent Winnipeg doctor, H.M. Speechly, over a period of almost four decades from 1925 to 1961. The letters to his daughter, Margaret Stansfield, written between 1925 and 1943, provide an interesting and relatively detailed chronicle of events and prominent people in Winnipeg. The fonds will be of particular value to anyone studying social, political, and economic conditions in Winnipeg. The records trace the activities of prominent community leaders and the various associations of which Speechly was an active member.  The photograph collection (PC 75) consists of one photograph of the Neston and District Cricket Club in England dated 1899.

Restrictions: There are no restrictions on this material.

Accruals: No further accruals are expected.

Finding aid: A printed finding aid is available in the Archives reading room and an on-line finding aid is available at the link below:

MSS 53, PC 75 (A.82-28).