Dr. John Morrison, First Clan Chief

Dr. John Morrison of Ruchdi,  1883-1974

Eoin mhic Eoin mhic Alasdair Mhor was the eldest son of John and Marion Morrison. His parents, both born in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, had moved to a farm near Oban on the mainland, where John and his brothers were born. John attended High School in Oban before moving to George Watson’s in Edinburgh and on to Edinburgh University, where he read medicine. During WW1 he served as a surgeon on hospital ships supporting military convoys. At the end of the war, having witnessed the eye diseases and tropical fevers which afflicted so many children in Africa, he returned to qualify as an eye surgeon and then as a tropical disease specialist, before returning to West Africa. Later he moved to the Far East, where he worked on an early malaria team in Malaya, and then to Hong Kong and Shanghai, where he took an avid interest in traditional Chinese medicine.

In the 1930s he turned down a Professorship in Vienna, concerned by the rise of fascism in Europe, and returned to Britain. Now with a young family to support, he took a country practice in Bolton, which he supported with work at the hospital in Manchester. Before the establishment of the NHS, he was known for only billing patients who he felt could afford his services. He preferred to live frugally while supporting the poorer members of his community in the Hebridean way.

In 1961 he retired to North Uist, delighted to be able to speak his native language again and to receive visitors, who came from all over the world to hear about family and island traditions. More reluctantly, but out of a deep sense of duty, he bowed to pressure from the clan society and the Court of the Lord Lyon to raise his standard as chief of the clan. Unlike his famous brother William (“Shakes”), he was never comfortable in the spotlight, but carried out his new duties with patience and a quiet dignity.