Dr. William Rivers (1864 - 1922)

William Rivers was the elder son of Rev. Henry Rivers and came to Tonbridge as a day boy from 1877-1880. He studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and subsequently specialized in psychology. He started his career at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, and went on to more senior appointments at Guy’s Hospital and Cambridge University where in 1897 he became a lecturer in Experimental Psychology and subsequently Director of the university’s new psychology laboratory, the first of its kind in England. He was also a distinguished anthropologist, particularly studying the development of culture among the peoples of Melanesia.

When war came, he joined the RAMC and was posted to Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh where he played a key role in the development of techniques to heal shell-shocked soldiers. Here his most famous patients were Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, who portrayed him memorably in his ‘Complete Memoirs of George Sherston’. More recently he became a central character in the ‘Regeneration’ trilogy of the novelist Pat Barker, where he is portrayed as the patient and deeply sympathetic man that he was.

Rivers could be said to have established experimental psychology and social anthropology as academic disciplines in the United Kingdom. He became a fellow of the Royal Society and received honorary degrees for his work from many British universities. He died suddenly at Cambridge in 1922.