Lieutenant-Colonel George Horne KStJ VD
First Commissioner of St John Victoria District, 1909-1921
Surgeon-Major George Horne, in charge of the Militia Ambulance Corps at Victoria Barracks, was also an Honorary Lecturer for St John Ambulance Association. When Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet visited Melbourne in 1908, Horne called for St John medallion-holders to help his militia men to give public first aid. The success of ‘Fleet Day’ led St John Council to form the first St John Ambulance Brigade Division in Victoria, with Horne as its first Commissioner.
Horne served with the Australian Voluntary Hospital in France during WW I and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After the war he returned to his career in obstetrics and gynaecology at the Women’s Hospital and his hobbies of ornithology and ethnology of Australian First Nations people. He remained on St John Council after his retirement as Commissioner. He was invested as a Knight of Grace in the Order of St John in 1924. He died in 1927.
