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Joshua Pim

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Joshua Pim

Dr Joshua Pim FRCSI (20 May 1869 – 15 April 1942) was a medical doctor and Irish amateur tennis player. He won the Wimbledon men's singles title two years in a row, in 1893 and 1894, and was ranked British number one in both those years. He won the Wimbledon men's doubles in 1890 and 1893.

Joshua Pim was born on 20 May 1869 at 1&2, Millward Terrace, Meath Road, Bray, County Wicklow. His parents were Joshua, a barrister who served in the Royal Tyrone Fusiliers, and Susannah Maria, née Middleton. His father died when the younger Joshua was barely two years old, leaving a widow and five young children.

As a child Pim lived for a while in Crosthwaite Park, Kingstown. In adulthood he moved with his wife Robin (née Lane) to Killiney. They had one son and three daughters. He died at Secrora, his home in Killiney, on 15 April 1942 aged 72, and was survived by his wife and four children. He was a keen swimmer and golfer, and a member of Killiney Golf Club.

Pim studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians in London. He graduated at Dublin in 1891 and shortly afterwards obtained appointment as a house surgeon in the city's Jervis Street Hospital. In 1899 he was elected Medical Officer for the Rathdown Workhouse Infirmary (subsequently redesignated as St Columcille's Hospital) at Loughlinstown, and he combined this appointment with general practice for 42 years.

Pim played tennis from the age of eleven and in 1888 became a member of Dublin's Lansdowne Club, then known as the All Ireland Lawn Tennis Club. He was coached there by Thomas Burke (father of Albert Burke). Almost immediately after joining the club he won the first prize and challenge cup at its annual tournament, and in May the same year he played his way to the semi-final of the Irish Championship where he met Herbert Lawford, the reigning Wimbledon singles champion. It took five sets for Lawford to prevail over his nineteen-year-old opponent whose good style and easy, cool play attracted considerable notice.

In 1889 Pim won the men's singles competition in the Yorkshire County Championship, a title he would win five times consecutivley. The same year he won the Landsdowne Championships. His first significant tennis triumph came in the following year when he and fellow Lansdowne member Frank Stoker (a relation of the writer Bram Stoker) won the Irish men's doubles championship. Pim then took the men's singles title at the prestigious English Northern Championships and immediately afterwards he and Stoker added the Wimbledon doubles title to their Irish success. In the Wimbledon singles he reached the semi-finals where he was defeated by Willoughby Hamilton from Kildare, who went on to win the championship. At Dublin he had lost the final round of the "all-comers" singles in five sets to Ernest Lewis who, partnered by George Hillyard, was defeated by Pim and Stoker in both the Irish and English doubles finals.

In 1891 Pim and Stoker retained their Irish doubles title but, "badly handicapped" (his right hand crushed and middle finger broken in a motor accident on the eve of the match), Pim lost the Dublin singles final to the defending champion Lewis. Although his finger remained "much swollen and painful" he again won the English Northern Championship, beating Wilfred Baddeley, but at Wimbledon he was defeated by Baddeley in the singles final and, in the doubles final, he and Stoker lost their title to Baddeley and his brother Herbert.

Recovering from typhoid, he was "totally unfit for hard match play" at the 1892 Irish Championship: he was defeated in the semi-finals of the singles competition and he and Stoker lost their doubles title. A month later he prevailed over Harry Barlow to win the English Northern Championship for the third time, but in the Wimbledon singles final he was beaten convincingly by Baddeley and, paired with Harold Mahony, lost the "all comers" phase of the doubles competition to Lewis and Barlow (who defeated the Baddeley brothers in the Challenge final).

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