Daniel Hay MACHATTIE

Captain Daniel Hay Machattie MRCVS was born in Aberdeen on 29 July 1879 and qualified in Glasgow on 20 December 1900. His veterinary career became international almost immediately. A New Zealand newspaper report published in March 1901 stated that, although only twenty-two, he had already gained practical experience in Scotland, New York, Montreal and Perth. He was one of three veterinary surgeons selected for work in New Zealand after examination by John Gilruth.

Machattie’s move to New Zealand therefore began as a professional appointment rather than simply private migration. In March 1905 the New Zealand Gazette formally appointed Daniel Hay Machattie MRCVS an Inspector under the Stock Act and the Slaughtering and Inspection Act, with effect from 1 March. This placed him within the government veterinary system before the war.

When the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was organised in 1914, Machattie entered the New Zealand Veterinary Corps. The New Zealand Gazette of 10 December 1914 records him as Captain in command of No. 1 Veterinary Section, with Captain Donald Henry Rait commanding No. 2. Service number 17/250, Machattie sailed with the New Zealand Veterinary Corps on 14 December 1914 and served in Egypt. Existing research for this memorial also records later veterinary hospital work in Cairo and attachment to the remount organisation at Heliopolis.

Machattie died in Egypt on 20 December 1916, aged thirty-seven. Earlier research for this memorial, drawing on the inquest and family correspondence, records that his death was caused by a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a prolonged period of ill-health and sleeplessness. That evidence should be treated with care: it tells us something of the pressures under which he had been living, but it does not justify a retrospective diagnosis or speculation beyond the surviving record.

He is buried in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, grave F.173. His life connects several strands of veterinary history: professional training in Scotland, transatlantic practical experience, New Zealand’s developing state veterinary service and, finally, the New Zealand Veterinary Corps at war.