Edmund Distin Maddick
Edmund Distin Maddick was an English surgeon and pioneer of cinema.
Studying medicine at St Thomas' Hospital, he became a doctor and later a surgeon in the Royal Navy, where achieved the rank of Admiral of the Fleet.
He was also a surgeon to the Italian Hospital in London and was a Knight to the Crown of Italy.
Becoming interested in cinematography, he rebuilt the Scala Theatre in 1905 and fitted it out for a Kinematograph. During the Great War, as the Intelligence Department's Director of Kinematography, he became closely involved in the filming of the major battles taking place in Europe. Probably the most notable production was the film The Battle of the Somme, released just a month after the first battle started in July 1916. After the War he used the cinema to teach human anatomy.
He was well-connected and well known in British and Italian Royal circles. The Tory Government offered him a baronetcy in 1925, but the General Election intervened and Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party reduced this offer to a knighthood. Insulted, Maddick turned this down and eventually accepted a CBE in 1927.
He constructed an unusual mausoleum at West Norwood Cemetery approximately ten years before he died. The building is nearly 40 ft high in white Portland stone surmounted by a marble figure of Christ and a child.
