Personal Details

Attribute Details
Nationality British
Date of Birth 29 March 1867
Place of Birth Tipperary Town, Tipperary, Ireland
Veterinary College and Date of Graduation London - May 1895

Military Service

Attribute Details
Last Rank Lieutenant-Colonel
Regiment/Service Army Veterinary Corps
Secondary Regiment Indian Civil Veterinary Department
Secondary Unit
First Theatre of War Unknown Date

Casualty Details

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Date of Death 02 March 1915
Age at Death 48
Place of Death Bareilly, India
Cause of Death Cerebal Haemorrhage

Cemetery

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Cemetery Bareilly Cemetery
Location Bareilly, India
Grave Reference
Commonwealth War Grave Yes
Emblem or Badge on Headstone

Honours and Memorials

Attribute Details
Name on RCVS Honour Board Yes
Name In Officers who died in Great War No
Medals and Awards

Biography

Lieutenant Colonel John Dalrymple Edgar Holmes CIE MA DSc CVD MRCVS was born in 1867 and was the son of Reverend John Holmes of The Manse, Tipperary.

He was educated at the Grammar School, Tipperary and from there proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin, from where he graduated with a BA degree in 1890. He entered the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College in November 1892 and studied there for two sessions until May 1894. He then went to the Royal Veterinary College, London, from where he qualified MRCVS in May 1895.

In 1895, he joined the Army Veterinary Department, and after four years of service, part of which was spent in India, he transferred to the Indian Civil Veterinary Department. He served as a Superintendent with the Department until 1901, when he was appointed Assistant Bacteriologist at the Muktesar Laboratory. In 1904 he returned to Europe in order to undertake postgraduate studies. While in Europe, he studied at Cambridge and was awarded a Doctorate degree in 1905. He then worked at both the Pasteur Institute and the School of Medicine in Paris, where he studied Parasitology.

When he returned to India in 1906, he was appointed for a short period as Professor of Sanitary Science at the Punjab Veterinary College, Lahore, but in September 1907, he returned to the Muktesar Institute, where the Government of India appointed him Imperial Bacteriologist. In 1910, he was awarded an MA degree, and in 1912, he won the Steele Memorial Medal for research work in veterinary science.

In 1913, he was made a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire, and in November 1914, he was promoted from Major to Lieutenant-Colonel in the Indian Civil Veterinary Department. He was the author of two books, “Bazaar Drugs” and “A Description of the Muktesar Laboratory and its Work”, as well as numerous scientific pamphlets and articles.

An obituary in the Veterinary Record pays testament to the high regard he was held in both within the profession and beyond:

“This month Lieut.-Col. Holmes would have completed his twentieth year of graduation. Probably no man, since the profession came into being, has ever done more valuable work than he during the first two decades spent in it. For years before his death he was recognized as a scientific investigator of the highest order, but, good as his purely research work was, he perhaps did even better work in the superintendence and development of the Muktesar Institute- now one of the largest experimental and serum-producing stations in the world, the economic value of which to India has become incalculable. The extracts from the Indian press which we printed last week show that his death is recognised in that country as a national loss- and, indeed, few men could have done more for Indian agriculture than he did at Muktesar. India has lost one of her most valuable civil servants, and veterinary pathology one of its ablest exponents.”

Holmes also has an extensive obituary in The Veterinary Journal dated June 1915

He died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage at Bareilly on 2nd March 1915, aged 48. He does not have a Commonwealth War Grave.

Media and Documents