Doctor in the house
Dr Robert Haldane Makgill was born at Stirling, Scotland in 1870, the second son of Captain Sir John Makgill, the 10th Viscount of Oxfuird, and Margaret Isabella Haldane, the sister of Lord Haldane, the Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1912 to 1915.
Another brother, John Scott Haldane, was a prominent scientist and his son, J.B.S. Haldane, an even more famous scientist who, in 1929, described how life had arisen from the interaction of chemicals with sunlight or lightning in Earth’s primordial oceans.
Sir John Makgill moved with his family to New Zealand in 1881 and established an extensive farm called Brackmont at Taurangaruru, near Waiuku. Later he acquired more land at Orua Bay at Manukau Heads, and was a director of the Waiuku and Onehunga Steam Navigation Co which ran the steamers Manukau and Weka.
Dr Makgill finished
