KING, SIR (FREDERICK) TRUBY (1858-1938) was born at New Plymouth, a son of Thomas King (q.v.). Educated privately at New Plymouth, he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.B., C.M. (1886) and won the Eccles scholarship. He spent two years studying public health, after which he took his B.Sc. degree. King had experience at the Edinburgh and Glasgow hospitals and, having married Isabella Cockburn (d. 1927), daughter of Adam Millar, he returned to New Zealand (1888) and took the post of medical superintendent of the Wellington hospital. Appointed in the following year medical superintendent of Seacliff asylum, he spent many useful years there, not merely in his official duties, but engaged in farming and fruitgrowing and in the breeding of pigs and other farm animals. His researches at that time had a considerable bearing upon his subsequent discoveries in the realm of infant feeding and the nutrition of the human body. In 1894 he returned to England to study brain pathology and nervous and mental diseases, and he became a member of the Psychological Association.

Shortly after this he began to attend regularly the agricultural conferences in New Zealand and to expound his eugenic theories to a wider audience. In 1905 he founded in Dunedin the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children (popularly known as the Plunket Society, from the name of its first patron, Lady Plunket). The society received a royal charter in 1916, when it became the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. King wrote much on the subject of the Society's work in its early years, his chief publications being The Feeding and Care of Baby, The Natural Feeding of Infants, The Expectant Mother and Baby's First Month. These were very frequently reprinted. The propaganda and educational work of the society in a few years produced marked effects upon the infant death rate. In 1917 King was invited to undertake similar work in England and, in conjunction with Miss Patrick (q.v.), he established the Mothercraft training centre at Earl's Court. (C.M.G., 1917.) After the war he was attached as a child welfare expert to the inter-allied Red Cross conference and he visited Poland and Austria in the interests of the war victims relief committee.

In 1919 he introduced his system of infant feeding in Australia, and two years later he was appointed director of child welfare in New Zealand (in addition to the appointment of inspector-general of mental asylums). In 1924 he was on the committee to investigate mental degeneracy and sexual perversion, and he was on the prisons board (1925-27).

In 1925 King was created a knight bachelor. He retired in 1927, and died on 10 Feb 1938, when his remains were accorded a state funeral. Lady King for many years wrote child welfare notes under the name of "Hygeia."

Who's Who N.Z., 1908; Evening Post, 10 Feb 1938; The Dominion, 11 Feb (p).

Reference: Volume 1, page 250

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