Dr Robert Hitchings and Headington
Left: George Charles Henry Hitchings, who had a house on Headington Hill as well as a medical practice in Oxford
Right: His son Robert Hitchings (born in Headington in 1863), who was Headington’s main doctor from the 1880s until his retirement in 1930, achieved fame as the joint founder of Headington United Football Club (later Oxford United)
Robert Hitchings's ancestors
- His great-great-grandfather John Hitchings was an Oxford tanner;
- His great-grandfather Edward Hitchings (1749–1825) was a tailor who became Mayor of Oxford and was knighted during a royal visit;
- His grandfather George Hitchings (1791–1851) was surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary;
- His father, George Charles Henry Hitchings, (1821–1897) was also a doctor.
Robert Hitchings's parents and elder siblings
George Hitchings had his medical practice in St Aldate's Street, where he is still listed in a directory of 1852, but from about 1850 he also owned a house in Oriel Street, where he lived with his family. By his first wife, Caroline Martha, George had had six children: the first two, Edward (1848) and Rose (1849), were baptised at St Aldate's Church, while Catherine (1850), Elizabeth (1854), Henry (1855, who died aged one day), and Alice (1856) were baptised at St Mary-the-Virgin Church.
George's second wife was Louisa Lacy (widow of Henry Charles Lacy, Esq., and daughter of the late Rev. Robert Brown, Vicar of North Aston), whom he had married in Scarborough on 23 August 1858. Their first two children were also baptised at St Mary the Virgin: Ethel Ada (1859), and Louisa (1861)
Robert's father George probably had wealthy patients up in Headington (as indeed had his grandfather in 1818, when he paid regular visits to Headington House). By 1861 George had a country house at the top of Headington Hill, and the census of that year implies that his family split itself variously across the two homes. On census night, down in Oriel Street were George (39) and his second wife Louisa (37) with Edward (13), a scholar chorister from the first marriage, and Ethel (1) and Louisa (4 weeks) from the second, plus four servants. Up the hill in Headington, George's unmarried sister Harriet (28), who was a governess, was looking after three of Robert's four older half-siblings, Rose (12), Catherine (11) and Elizabeth (7).
Robert Hitchings
George Hitchings still had his country house in Headington in the 1860s, and his youngest son, Robert Hitchings himself, was born there on 28 December 1863 and baptised at St Andrew's Church on 3 April 1864.
The whole family spent census night in 1871 at 37 Holywell Street, where the medical practice of Robert's father was now based. George (49) and Louisa (47) are there with the four children from the first marriage – Edmund (23), Rose (22), Catherine (22) , and Elizabeth (17) – and the three from the second: Ada (11), and Louisa (10), and Robert (7). But the following year, on 26 April 1872, Rose was married at Headington, implying that the family still had its home in Headington and regarded it as their main private residence.
By 1881, however, it looks as though they no longer have their Headington house, and Robert (17), who is described as a scholar, is living at 37 Holywell Street with his parents and his four unmarried sisters: his half-sisters Catherine (31) and Elizabeth (28), and his full sisters Ethel Ada (21) and Louisa (20).
Robert qualified as a surgeon at the University of Edinburgh, passing his examination in anatomy and physiology on 8 July 1884 and admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 27 July 1886.
Robert's father George is listed in Kelly’s 1890 directory as the Medical Officer and Public Vaccinator for Headington and Wheatley and the medical officer for the workhouse.
At the time of the 1891 census George Hitchings (69) was living with his wife Louisa and his four spinster daughters at 37 Holywell Street, but Robert (27) had moved out: he was a general practitioner lodging in two rooms in the house of a cabinet maker at 214 Cowley Road. He initially worked with his father from his Holywell Street practice, riding up to Headington on the horses that he kept at the Randolph Hotel. (The practice would have involved many trips to Headington, as his father was Medical Officer and Public Vaccinator for Headington and Wheatley and the medical officer for Headington Workhouse.)
On 26 March 1892 Robert's mother Louisa died at their house in Holywell Street at the age of 67.
Around this time Robert married his wife Millie, and they moved up to Hill View, a brand-new house in Windmill Road. Their only child Evelyn May Herbert Hitchings was born there on 16 May 1893, and baptised at St Andrew's Church on 12 June.
Also in 1893 , Hitchings started to appear in Jackson's Oxford Journal, along with his friend the Revd Scott-Tucker, Vicar of St Andrew's Church, playing for Headington United Cricket Club, and the following year, on 30 June 1894 it was reported that "Dr Hitchings was again in brilliant form, and is quite the mainstay of the Headington team".
His foundation of Headington Football Club (which eventually became Oxford United) was very low-key, and was simply designed to keep the boys of Headington out of mischief in the winter. He was helped by the Vicar of St Andrew’s Church, and the parish magazine for November 1893 reads:
The cricket season being over, Mr Hitchings, with his customary energy and zeal for the young men of the parish, has inaugurated a football club.
Hitchings took part in the early games himself, scoring a goal on 13 January 1894 when the Headington team beat Victoria.
Robert's father George died at 37 Holywell Street at the age of 75 on 21 May 1897, and it appears that Robert Hitchings not only kept on the practice there, but moved back down to the house for about ten years. He spent census night in 1901 there with his wife and 7-year-old daughter and three servants (a governess, housemaid, and cook).
In 1908 Dr Hitchings built a house on the London Road (on the western corner of the present Kennett Road). Directories list it as "The Cottage, London Road", but in fact it was a large house with an extensive garden, as the map on the left shows: the tennis court stretched down as far as the present Peacock’s, and there were stables behind where the parking area for the shops is now. Also at the back were a waiting room, three surgery rooms, and a dispensary. The 1911 census shows Hitchings and his wife living here with two servants.
Alec Hansford looked after the garden and horses, acted as chauffeur, and also delivered medicines to patients on foot.
Dr Hitchings initially used a bicycle (which was well known for its striped saddle cover) as well as a horse to get around, but in 1907 got his first car, a Darracq. His practice also covered Cowley, where he had arrangements to hold a surgery at 45 (then 18) Temple Road: he was the only GP in Cowley until 1922.
Dr Hitchings' first car was a Darracq. It is shown right in about 1907 and left, with his grandson Michael Swann, in about 1926, looking down what is now Kennett Road (which then petered out into a narrow lane with no houses)
As well as encouraging local football, Robert Hitchings wrote and produced plays for the Headington Drama Club, and his hobby was woodwork. During the depression his wife used to deliver coal to local people.
On 28 October 1919 Hitchings's daughter Evelyn (26) married Henry Leslie Aldersley (23) an engineer, at St Andrew's Church.
Dr Charles McCay joined Dr Hitchings in 1922, Dr Terry in 1925, and Dr Arnott in 1930, the year that Dr Hitchings retired to a house in Abberbury Road in Iffley (although he went on being vaccinator for Headington until 1938). Dr Arnott bought his former house, and continued the practice with Drs McCay and Firth, with Drs Anderson, Campbell, and Wells joining later. When the NHS started in 1948, the practice opened a surgery in the Manor Buildings, upstairs over Gardiner’s optician on the corner of Osler Road, and this Manor Surgery is now in the grounds of the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Much of this information was supplied by Jill McCay (daughter of Dr Hitchings' partner in practice Dr Charles McKay) and Michael Swann, the son of Dr Robert Hitchings' only daughter Evelyn (known as May).
