Donald Sinclair (veterinary surgeon)

Donald Vaughan Sinclair (22 April 1911 – 28 June 1995) was a British veterinary surgeon (graduated from the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, 1933) made famous as the eccentric character Siegfried Farnon in the semi-autobiographical books of James Herriot (Alf Wight), later adapted for film and television as All Creatures Great and Small.

He was the son of Margretta née Vaughan and James Sinclair, a leather goods manufacturer who died in his adolescence, and studied to be a veterinary surgeon in Edinburgh, as his future friend and colleague James Alfred ('Alf') Wight (alias James Herriot) was similarly so studying in Glasgow. Although never referenced in the Herriot fiction series, the autobiography acknowledges the early death of his first wife, Evelyn Beatrice Sinclair née Holborow. They married at St. Giles, Edinburgh, on 4 November 1930, both aged 19 years and after his graduation, the couple moved to live in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In 1936, aged only 24 years, Evelyn Sinclair died of bovine brucellosis transmitted by contaminated milk, three years before he purchased the Kirkgate property that was made famous in the Herriot series. The couple had no children. Sinclair had a son, Alan Donald, and a daughter, Janet, with his second wife Audrey née Adamson in 1944. There are several internet references to the fact that Sinclair was also Master of the now disbanded (1987) Wensleydale Harriers

In 1939, he bought an existing veterinary practice at 23 Kirkgate, Thirsk, Yorkshire, and in July 1940 hired Wight to run it while he (Sinclair) was undertaking his war service in the Royal Air Force. However, Sinclair had deliberately misrepresented himself as being younger than he was in order to join up, and it was quickly discovered that his reflexes were not fast enough for him to continue with pilot training. He could have been redeployed within the service, but the fact that he was a veterinary surgeon (a reserved occupation) meant that he was considered more useful to the war effort by resuming his peacetime profession. The severe national food shortage meant that proper veterinary treatment of farm animals received a very high priority, and so within four months of joining the RAF he received a compulsory discharge and he returned to Thirsk.

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