| Code | BPS/GB/57 |
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| Name | Mott; Sir; Frederick Walker (1853-1926); M.D.Lond., LL.D.Edin., FRS |
| PreTitle | Sir |
| Forenames | Frederick Walker |
| Surname | Mott |
| Dates | 1853-1926 |
| Epithet | M.D.Lond., LL.D.Edin., FRS |
| Other Names | Frederick Walter Mott |
| Gender | Male |
| Nationality | British |
| DatesAndPlaces | Born Brighton 23 October 1853 died Birmingham General Hospital 8 June 1926
?1853-1877?
London ?1878-1882
Vienna / 1881
Liverpool 1883-1884/
London /1884-1922
Birmingham 1923-1926 |
| Address | London |
| Relationships | The only son of Henry Mott, (nd) of Brighton, Sussex, who was of Huguenot descent, and his wife, Caroline, daughter of William Fuller of Pulborough, Sussex. Both parents died when he was a child.
Married Georgina Alexandra (nd), daughter of George Thomas Soley (nd), shipowner, of Liverpool; they had four daughters.
Worked with E.A.Sharpey-Schafer (1850-1935), with Vistor Horsley (1857-1916), with Leonard Hill (1866-1952), with W.D. Halliburton (nd)and later with C.S.Sherrington (1857-1952) on cortical localization in the gibbon |
| Activity | Founder member British Psychological Society 1901.
F W Mott graduated in 1881 from University College Medical School London with MB, BS first class, and as university scholar and gold medallist in forensic medicine. He spent a period mixing with foreign postgraduate medical workers, studying pathology in Vienna.
In 1883 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Physiology at Liverpool University and left this post in 1884 to lecture on physiology at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. In 1886 he obtained his MD and MRCP. In 1890 he became Assistant Physician to Charing Cross Hospital and in 1894 full physician, and began lecturing first on general pathology and then on neurology. In 1892 he was elected fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 1895 he was appointed Pathologist to the Central Laboratory of the London County Council Asylum at Claybury, though he retained connection with Charing Cross, and began his special studies of the pathology of the nervous system in relation to the psychoses, especially general paralysis. Mott's paper published in Archives of Neuorology 1900 (which he founded) by analysing a vast amount of clinical and anatomical evidence, irrefutably demonstrated, in the days before Wassermann, the link with syphilis. In 1896 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).
His inquiries into the bacteriology of hospital dysentery and tuberculosis led to reforms in hygiene in mental hospitals and enormous reduction of mortality from these diseases. His Croonian Lectures in 1900, "Degeneration of the Neurone", are a record of one of the first attempts to seek for the products of nervous disintegration in the living body.
During the 1914-1918 war, he was consultant neurologist to the Fourth London General Hospital, King's College, and to the Maudsley Hospital which was attached to it.
He devoted the Lettsomian Lectures of 1916 to "The Effect of High Explosives on the Nervous System" and the Chadwick Lecture in 1917 to "Mental Hygiene in Shell Shock during and after the War".
In 1923 he became Honorary Director of the Joint Board of Research for Mental Diseases, City and University of Birmingham and lecturer in morbid psychology at Birmingham University 1923-1926.
In 1925 he gave the Harveian Oration and in 1926 a second Chadwick Lecture on "Heredity in Relation to Mental Diseases and Mental Deficiency". He was also one of the chief agents in establishing postgraduate training in psychiatry (the DPM) at the Univesity of London.
He addressed the British Psychological Society on several occasions, beginning with "Bilateral Cortical Lesion, causing Deafness and Aphasia" at the meeting held at Claybury in 1903.
Mott received numerous honours and prizes, as well as appointments to lectureships, in recognition of his scientific work. He was awarded
The Stewart prize of the Medical Association (1903)
The Fothergill gold medal and prize of the Medical Society of London (1911)
The Moxon gold medal of the Royal College of Physicians (1919)
Oliver-Sharpey lecturer (1910)
Lettsomian lecturer (1916)
Harveian orator to the Royal College of Physicians London (1925)
Morrison lecturer to the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh (1921)
Huxley lecturer at Charing Cross Hospital (1910)
Bowman lecturer to the Ophthalmological Society (1904)
Fullerian lecturer at the Royal Institution
Mott, an accomplished singer, was elected as president of the Society of English Singers 1923
Created KBE in acknowledgement of his war service as Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps 1919
Recieved honorary degree of LLD from Edinburgh University 1919
At the time of his death (1926) Mott was President of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association
Sources: Pamphlet entitled "The British Psychological Society 1901-1961" supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society by Kenna, J.C. (1913-2004) Hon.Archivist BPS (BPS London) 1961
E.A.Sharpey-Schafer, "Mott, Sir Frederick Walker (1853-1926)", rev. Rachel E.Davies, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [accessed 9 Dec 2004: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35127]
Compiled by Mike Maskill, BPS Archivist for the History of Psychology Centre. |
| OtherInfo | He played an important role in the establishment of the Maudsley Hospital at Denmark Hill, London influencing the London County Council to establish well equipped clinical laboratories in each of the mental hospitals which were to be constructed in close connection with and to some extent under the supervision of the central laboratory at Maudsley. |
| PublishedWorks | In 1893 he published his first independent noteworthy research on the spinal cord of the monkey and the immediate and remote effects of hemisection, Phil. Trans. B., Vol. 183
Syphilis paper "The Aetiology and Pathology of General Paralysis" Archives of Neurology, Vol 1, 1900
He wrote a report on his work concerning sleeping sickness, entitled "Histological Observations on Sleeping Sickness and other Trypanosome Infections" published as No.7 of the Reports of the Sleeping Sickness Commission of the Royal Society in December 1906
He published a book and several papers on "shell shock"
A Bibliography is published in Contributions to Psychiatry, Neurology and Sociology, dedicated to the late Sir Frederick Mott, London: H.K.Lewis, 1929 |
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| Source | Sources: Pamphlet entitled "The British Psychological Society 1901-1961" supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society by Kenna, J.C. (1913-2004) Hon.Archivist BPS (BPS London) 1961
E.A.Sharpey-Schafer, "Mott, Sir Frederick Walker (1853-1926)", rev. Rachel E.Davies, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [accessed 9 Dec 2004: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35127] |
| Conventions | International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) - Ottawa 1996 ISBN ISBN 0-9696035-3-3
National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 |