Edmund Clarke Kinkead
was born in Kingston on July 18th, 1873, the eldest of the twelve children of Edward Daniel and Ursulena Clarke
Kinkead. He was educated at the Collegiate School, then the best school in Kingston, and at schools in England. He worked
in the Drug Department of his father’s store in Kingston.
He studied optics in Toronto in the mid-1890s
and then ran the Optical Department of his father’s establishment; later he started his own office as an optician. He
studied medicine at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada and graduated M.D. and C.M.
He practised in Jamaica and later in Central
America, where he was in charge of the United Fruit Company’s Hospital, in Bocas-del-Toro.
He went to Britain around 1908 and graduated
at Edinburgh as L.R.C.P, and L.R.C.S. and at Glasgow as L.F.P. and S.
At the end of World War I he migrated to
the U.S.A.; he died in Boston in 1928. He was married twice, and was survived by his four children. The Kinkead family still
operates their pharmacy on Port Royal Street.
In 1910 the
Jamaica Times described Dr E. C. Kinkead as ‘Kindly, sympathetic, good to the poor. A worthy son of a worthy father.’
