He was born on 31 January 1872 in
Glasgow, the son of George Purdy a market gardener and his wife, Frances Smith. The family moved to
Morpeth in northern England in his infancy. He was educated at
King Edward VI School, Morpeth. He then studied medicine at
Aberdeen University graduating MB CM in 1898. In 1899 he joined his older brother Dr James Purdy at
Otaki Hospital in
New Zealand. However, after only a few months he volunteered to join the
Second Boer War as a Surgeon-Captain in the
New Zealand Mounted Rifles. When he was demobilised in 1902 he went to
London to seek employment and obtained a post at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He undertook a Diploma in Public Health at
Cambridge University. He also returned to Aberdeen for his doctorate (MD) with a thesis on
syphilis. After a few months as a GP in
Liverpool he joined Dr E. T. Ross at the Quarantine Service in
Egypt, as a Foreign Office nominee in 1905. In 1906 he was reposted to
El-Tor in the
Sinai district, overseeing the quarantine of pilgrims returning from
Mecca. He moved to
Sydney in
Australia in 1913 as Metropolitan Medical Officer of Health under Dr J. A. Thompson. Within a few weeks of the onset of the
First World War he again volunteered, serving as a sanitary officer with the
Australian Army Medical Corps attached to the 1st Division Australian forces in
Egypt (where his local understanding was greatly beneficial). On 1 January 1916 he was promoted to Lt Colonel and placed in charge of sanitation at
Tel-el-Kebir overseeing a camp of 30,000 ANZAC troops. In October 1916 he was attached to the 10th Field Ambulance Division on the western front in
Belgium. He won the
Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his services at
Messines Ridge in the summer of 1917. Also
Mentioned in Dispatches he was promoted to temporary Colonel and oversaw the 3rd Australian General Hospital at
Abbeville in France from January to June 1918. He was returned to Australia before the end of the war to combat the spreading
Spanish flu epidemic which had reached Australia on the returning hospital ships. He reached Sydney in September 1918 and began a year-long battle trying to combat the epidemic. The situation was worsened by two minor outbreaks of plague in Sydney in 1920. He was made President of the Health Society of
New South Wales and Chairman of the Public Health Association and President of the Australian Association of Fighting Venereal Disease. In his position on the Town Planning Association of NSW he was influential in instigating a programme of slum clearance in Sydney. He was also President of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia and Deputy Chairman of the
St John's Ambulance Association. He died at St Luke's Hospital in
Sydney on 26 July 1936. The "J S Purdy Memorial Medal" was struck in his honour by Sydney Technical College in the year of his death. ==Family==