(information supplied in part by one of his descendants)
David was born in 1863 in Dundee, Scotland to William Nairn and his wife Elizabeth Mathewson. William was a merchant linen company agent but died in 1865.
David’s brothers worked as sales clerks and bank clerks but David trained in medicine. Having passed his exams he secured passage to New Zealand working as the ship’s medical officer in about 1884. He practised for 36 years in Blenheim which in 1884 was lacking a third doctor and where he “was out and about the country in all weathers ministering to the sick” (NZ Herald 24 July 1924). He was an anaesthesiologist at Wairau for many years
He was married first to Margaret Hood in 1885, and they had four daughters. After Margaret died he married Hannah Maria “Annie” Farmar in 1894 and they had four sons.
In 1903 Annie accepted £250 and expenses in settlement of an action brought by her in the Scotch Courts against the New Zealand Shipping Company in which she claimed £3,000 damages in respect to the injuries sustained by her when disembarking from the ‘Wakanui’ to go ashore in Teneriffe. As she was passing down the gangway into the boat, the content of a shute from the kitchen galley were discharged upon her which caused her to fall into the water (Motueka Star,20 January 1903).
After serving in the war, two of their sons (Norman and Gerald) went to Syria where they conducted a trans-desert motor mail service.
Exposure to the rain and storms eventually took its toll on David Nairn and he suffered from rheumatism which compelled him to give up practice in 1920 and move to Wellington where he died in 1924. He is buried with his second wife Annie in Public 2 section (L/394).
