Reg Turnbull

Turnbull was born on 21 February 1908 in Shanghai, China, the son of Bertha (née Widler) and William John Turnbull. His mother was born in Singapore, and his father was an Australian journalist working on the North China Daily News. Turnbull's father died when he was a boy and his mother remarried to Enos Soren Thellefsen, a Danish diplomat in the Shanghai International Settlement. He began his schooling at Jewell's Private Day Boarding School in Shanghai, before completing his secondary education in Australia at Wesley College, Melbourne. At Wesley he was a classmate of future prime minister and parliamentary colleague Harold Holt. He was nicknamed "Spot" from a young age due to a prominent mole on his forehead. ==Medical career==

Turnbull commenced studying medicine at the University of Melbourne in 1928 and graduated MBBS in 1933. In September 1975, he was deregistered by the Medical Council of Tasmania on the grounds that he had engaged in professional misconduct. A 17-year-old girl alleged that Turnbull had "interfered with her" during an examination in Devonport in March 1975. No charges were laid against Turnbull and he denied the allegations, stating he was the victim of "a set-up job". He was eventually reinstated in December 1976 and ran a practice at George Town until his retirement in 1986. ==Politics==

State politics Turnbull became involved in politics through his advocacy for compulsory tuberculosis screening, which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) supported. topping the poll in the seat of Bass. He denied the allegations and stated that Fitzpatrick had in fact offered to bribe him, which he reported to police. He was found not guilty of corruption in October 1958, and returned to his prior portfolios. Turnbull chose to recontest Bass as an independent, resulting in his automatic expulsion from the Labor Party. He was re-elected with a personal vote of 28 percent, a record for an independent. Federal politics Turnbull resigned from state parliament on 30 October 1961 to stand for the Senate at the 1961 federal election. he briefly served as leader of the Australia Party from August 1969 to January 1970. However, he ultimately decided not to contest the seat, on the grounds that he believed a double dissolution was likely and he did not have the funds to run multiple campaigns in a short amount of time. He was proven correct as the June by-election was followed 6 months later in December by the double dissolution 1975 Australian federal election caused by the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. Turnbull did not nominate, still in the middle of the deregistration fight with the Medical Council of Tasmania, which lasted until his reinstatement in December 1976. It was the end of his political career. ==Personal life==

In 1929, Turnbull married Elizabeth Ffrost, with whom he had three children. He was widowed in the mid-1980s and remarried in 1987 to Nell Fullerton (), the daughter of surgeon John Ramsay. He died in Melbourne on 17 July 2006 at the age of 98. ==References==