Francis Johnson Dunning, veterinary surgeon, was the son of Daniel Dunning and his wife Rose Johnson. He qualified (MRCVS) at Edinburgh in 1901 and came to South Africa during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) to serve as a civil veterinary surgeon attached to the Army Veterinary Department until 1904. After his discharge from the army he remained in South Africa as a government veterinarian, first in the Transvaal (from June 1905) and from 1912 as district veterinary surgeon in the Veterinary Division (Department of Agriculture) of the Union of South Africa. In 1911 he obtained his FRCVS with a thesis entitled East Coast Fever. During World War I (1914-1918) he served in the East Africa campaign, after which he returned to the Veterinary Division until his retirement in 1934. However, he also lectured in veterinary science at the Stellenbosch-Elsenburg College of Agriculture of the University of Stellenbosch in the early nineteen-thirties. Late in his career he published some 15 papers, including two in the Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association on 'East coast fever and its eradication' (1929) and 'Two uncommon skin parasites' (1931).

Dunning was a member of the South African Veterinary Medical Association and in 1929 resided in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal. After his retirement he practiced for a few years in Port Elizabeth. He was married to Ethel Gladys Konss-Baylis in 1908 and they had a son and a daughter. In 1938 he married Dorothy Blanche Gates.

List of sources:

Boshoff, Annette. Personal communications, with documentary support, March 2024.

FamilySearch: Francis Johnson Dunning. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95F4-SFM3?view=index&personArk=/ark:/61903/1:1:4KMT-V36Z&action=view and https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KV2Y-46S

Google scholar. http://scholar.google.co.za Publications by F.J. Dunning.

Journal of the South African Veterinary Medical Association, 1927, Vol. 1(1), pp. 84-85: List of members of the South African Veterinary Medical Association; 1929, Vol. 1(3), pp. 77-83: Register of veterinarians of the Union of South Africa and South West Africa.

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://www.national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Francis Johnson Dunning / F.J. Dunning.

Posthumus, P.J. Past Veterinarians in South Africa, Vol. 1, 10th edition, [1992].

Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, London: FRCVS theses.

Union of South Africa. Public service list, 1914.

Compiled by: D.W. Verwoerd

Last updated: 2024-03-13 12:20:47