Reaching the Top?
In retrospect the summer of 1927-28 might have been the pinnacle of his career, at least so far as Tasmania was concerned. January 1928 was very busy in Hobart. On January 12 Flynn hosted a meeting of his sub-committee of the Fisheries Development Conference in the red velvet splendour of the Legislative Council. The Minister for Fisheries George Becker welcomed the visitors and Herbert Gepp and Stanley Fowler joined the discussions. A few days later the Mercury announced that the recent meeting on Fisheries Development hosted by the Development and Migration Commission had recommended the establishment of the national marine biological station and Tasmania was the preferred site. Joseph Lyons had announced that his Government was ‘favourably disposed’ towards it and would pay half the establishment cost, estimated to be £8000, and the annual expenditure of £1500. This was a major achievement for Flynn and he set in motion a design study. Two days later he gave evidence to the Commission on the Australian Constitution arguing for greater involvement by the Federal Government in fisheries development. He argued that Australia should adopt a US style fisheries administration with a national fisheries service doing research and the States managing the resources. Flynn’s role in national fisheries policy is discussed in detail in another chapter.
On the morning that he was to give evidence to the Commission on the Constitution he must have read in the Mercury the account of the evidence given the previous day by Col. Lord, the Chairman of the Sea Fisheries Board. On the adjoining page he must also have seen the obituary to his old nemesis, the former Registrar Montagu Ansell who had died in Melbourne. Ansell had studied law after leaving his position at the University and moved to Melbourne where he was secretary of the St Kilda Bowls club.
Immediately following hearings of the Commission Hobart hosted a meeting of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science. Flynn’s paper on the Wynyard Whale was part of the programme and he took the Zoology delegates on another of his dredging cruises in D’Entrecasteaux Channel. It is perhaps indicative of Flynn’s marital status that he is not mentioned once in the extensive newspaper reports of the many social events that were held during this month. Of course he may have just been too busy but he would probably felt out of place amongst the crowd of notables and their wives that saturated the city.
In town for that meeting was Howard Gepp of the Development and Migration Commission and Douglas Mawson. Flynn was pleased to resume his productive friendship with the former but perhaps not the latter for the promised Pycnogonid paper was still unfinished. Another visitor was the young Theo Roughley who had been commissioned by Flynn on behalf of the Sea Fisheries Board to advise the State on renewing an effort to culture oysters. Flynn had much to discuss with Gepp now that his Tasmanian Fisheries Development Scheme was being considered by the Development and Migration Commission. (see also )
When all the activity had settled he set off for Sydney to spend the first term of 1928 resuming his studies in marsupial reproduction, where he did some collaborative work with Prof H G Chapman on factors that trigger birth in mammals. He was expecting Thomas to join him but the musical conference the Registrar was hoping to attend there did not eventuate. (Thomas later became Business and Publicity Manager of the National Opera Company.) Flynn told Thomas that he had attended the opening of the carillon and had given a lecture to the Feminist Club that had been well reviewed by the newspapers. As Thomas could not come to Sydney himself he asked him to go to Flynn’s office and find his new camera lucida and send it to him. ‘I have not heard anything from Tassie. Could you tell me how many students in Biology III there are this year.’
When reporting to the Ralston Trustees in July 1928 he outlined his progress in marsupial research but also spent considerable time in describing his fisheries work and a somewhat confusing account of his Pycnogonid papers that included references to collections sent to him from South Africa. In finishing his Report to the Trustees he spent a good deal of space recounting how his work was being recognised internationally.
Just as he was reaching the pinnacle of his academic and public life in Tasmania it was all threatened. His financial affairs had been highly problematic since 1920 when Marelle decided not to return to Tasmania. As she had no apparent finance of her own we must assume that Theo supported her and their daughter in Sydney and Europe as well as himself and Errol. The strain on his income (from the University via the Ralston Trust) might explain why he became involved with the Tasmanian Fisheries Development scheme. Now that seemed less likely to provide any long-term income and his University salary was also under threat.
After finishing a paper on fisheries development for the Development and Migration Commission at the end of 1928, as usual Flynn went off to Sydney to spend his time at the University and the Australian Museum. He was planning to finish his three-year study of the placenta in Bettong and another paper on ‘The unsegmented egg of the Echidna’. As he was preparing to leave he received a letter from David Watson, with whom he had collaborated on his previous visit to England, announcing that a student, Miss S M Manton of Girton College, Cambridge, was planning to visit him to study the primitive mountain shrimp, Anaspides.
Sidnie Milana Manton was then a handsome twenty-six year-old woman who had just been awarded her PhD. She already had a formidable reputation for academic excellence and like Flynn was to soon be awarded a DSc. Flynn was a member of the Barrier Reef Investigation Committee and after her stay in Hobart she joined the Great Barrier Reef Expedition led by Yonge. She arrived at Low Isles on 26 March 1929 and worked with the shore party for several months and then returned to England. Her husband J P Harding, who she married in 1937 became keeper of Zoology at the British Museum. Perhaps Flynn saw in the young Dr Manton some reflection of Marelle for Sidonie had been captain of the Cambridge swimming team in 1923 and a blue in hockey the next year. Her later career resulted in being made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1948 and awarded the Linnean Society’s gold medal for zoology in 1963. Even more striking is the fact that her sister, later professor of botany at Leeds University, also became a FRS. This is the only case of two sisters being so honoured in the history of the Society.
Consequently he did not go to Sydney until the end of January and did not return until the beginning of second term. As well as Dr Manton Flynn also had a visit from another English colleague, Dr Fraser from University College London. Flynn later reported to the Trustees that he had from heard Professors Calman and Stanley Gardiner that Sidnie had written home ‘in great praise of the research work being carried out in my laboratory under the Trustees bequest’. Flynn’s own student Isobel Travers must have received great encouragement from Manton’s visit.
The work on the Echidna turned out very well. Flynn was curious about why the egg of this animal was retained in the uterus for about a week before being laid and what causes it to be born. He had already discovered that the eggs of other marsupials, such as the bettong also had shells for a while but the shell is dissolved before birth and the embryo nourished from the mother’s tissues though a placenta. In higher mammals the egg never has a shell. ‘I submit that the investigation of questions such as these is not only of the greatest importance, but of the greatest practical importance,’ he told the Trustees in July 1929. He went on the very perceptively predict where his present research would lead.
‘Medical research has largely up to the present been directed towards ensuring the health of man after birth. In future his prenatal welfare will be the subject of enlarged and more detailed investigation.’
In striving to retain the support of the Trustees he reminded them that it was their late Chairman Dr L G Thompson who had encouraged Flynn to pursue this path and to whom ‘I have always been deeply indebted.’
In the Report for 1928-29 Flynn mentions his research work on the sea spiders that he had done on the South African collection that had been published by that Government and another on Queensland specimens published by the Queensland Museum. He then went on to outline his fisheries development work. As this was not obviously within the research parameters of the Bequest one wonders why he mentioned it, particularly when his future was in question. It seems to have been a pre-emptive move as his project could not have escaped the notice of the Trustees. Apparently the Chairman of the Trustees raised with the university the amount of time that Flynn was spending on fisheries matters for Flynn sent a note to the registrar from Sydney in February 1930.
‘The amount of fisheries research carried on in the Dept. of Biology is infinitesimal compared with that of marsupial research and it is carried on entirely outside the term which is legally allowed for research under the Ralston Agreement.
It is carried on because -
(a) the prosecution of one type of research alone has a detrimental effect on the outlook of any investigator.
(b) it is of great value to the State and the University
(c) it appears as one of the objects of research in the Ralston Agreement.’
Here Flynn may have, perhaps inadvertently, gone to the heart of the disagreement between the Trustees and the University that threatened his tenure. There was no objective way of determining exactly how much time Flynn spent on his various activities but all were paid for from the Bequest. Only another marsupial expert could have evaluated compliance with the narrow terms of the Agreement and none was available. The university term that Flynn devoted to research varied. Point (a) seems strange in the context of the modern tendency towards ever more specialised research but may have still been acceptable in 1929. Point (b) was very true but was it relevant? Point (c) was also true but the Trustees viewed fisheries as a minor activity when it was added to the Agreement by the 1921 revision. For Flynn it was no longer minor but it was within the terms, for much of it was done during the time he was not committed to ‘Ralston research’. Flynn’s fisheries activities were of potentially great value to the community, of direct value to the Government and thus of at least indirect value to the University. Perhaps of more importance it was one of the valuable, and obvious, services that the University could provide to the Tasmanian public.
Not satisfied with the response the Trustees then asked him directly to discontinue work on fisheries and ‘concentrate on other aspects of the research programme.’ Perhaps this may have been the first Tasmanian example of a disagreement between an external funding agency and an academic researcher. ‘One term’, in a strict sense meant a third of the academic year, of say nine months, plus the holidays at the end of terms I and II. During 1915-16 and from 1925-6 to 1928-9 Flynn spent a lot of time on fisheries matters but did it contravene the terms of the contract? Even during those years he provided the Trustees with credible evidence of his marsupial research and the University seemed to provide de jure verification.
Neither Flynn nor the University had paid anything but lip service to the fields of research stipulated under the Bequest without drawing any obvious comment from the Trustees. After the election of the Lyons Labor Government in 1923 Flynn’s alignment with it had become more evident. Government support for his Tasmanian Fisheries Development Company in 1925 was not universally supported. Perhaps Flynn’s perceived political alignment, one that was probably not congruent with that of all the Ralston Trustees may have affected his standing with them. But it seems clear that all three parties genuinely believed that they were acting in accordance with wishes of John Ralston. What cannot be overlooked was the economic conditions that pertained in 1929. The rural depression in Tasmania and the collapse of the stock market squeezed the resources of both the Trustees and the University and Theo Flynn was caught in the middle.
Returning to Hobart from his summer research in Sydney Flynn had another request from a researcher to study in his Department. Prof W J Dakin was already a major figure in Australian zoology and had attended the fisheries conferences organised by the Development and Migration Commission. They had both been unsuccessful applicants for the Chair of Zoology in Sydney in 1922. Dakin and Flynn collected specimens of the elephant shark, Callorynchus, and Dakin analysed the biochemistry of their blood. He was thus able to add another important name to the list of researchers prepared to travel to Hobart to work in his Department. The Trustees were reminded of this situation and the long list of overseas researchers that Flynn said had asked him for specimens and advice. In this, his last report, he finishes with the usual assurances of his continued interest in the research work entrusted to him and of his ‘desire to prosecute it to the best of my ability’ but one gets the clear impression that by the end of 1929 the relationship was irretrievably broken.