PARKE, ROBERT (fl. 1800), architect and builder, whose christian name is occasionally given as Edward, and surname as Park and Parks, and even Sparks, had a large practice in Dublin. There he designed or carried out, between August 1787 and October 1794, at a cost of 25,396l., the west façade (with the Ionic colonnade from a design by Colonel Samuel Hayes), 147 feet long, as an addition to the Irish House of Commons, now the Bank of Ireland. It is claimed that this front was executed from a design by James Gandon [q. v.], but it is clear that Gandon designed only the eastern additions, which were of earlier dates (Mulvany, pp. 115, 116).
Between 29 July 1796, and 1799 the Commercial Buildings in Dublin were erected, from Parke's or Sparks's designs, at a cost of 37,000l. They were of granite, were commenced on 29 July 1796, and were opened in 1799. The ultimate conversion of the senate house into the Bank of Ireland in 1804 was conducted by Parke, from the design of Francis Johnston (Mulvany, p. 144). In 1806 he designed the Royal College of Surgeons at a cost of about 40,000l., and about 1816 the infirmary and dwelling to the Hibernian Marine School, at a cost of over 6,000l. The date of his death has not been ascertained.
[Whitelaw and Walsh's History of Dublin, 4to, Dublin, 1808, i. 234, 530, 615, 987; Mulvany's Life of Gandon, 8vo, Dublin, 1846; Dictionary of Architecture; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
PARKE, THOMAS HEAZLE (1857–1893), surgeon-major army medical staff and African traveller, was second son of William Parke, esq., J.P., of Clogher House, Drumsna, co. Roscommon, and Henrietta, daughter of Henry Holmes of Newport House, Isle of Wight. The family, said to be of Kentish origin, settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. Born at the family residence on 27 Nov. 1857, Parke spent his early days in the neighbourhood of Carrick-on-Shannon, co. Leitrim, with which town his family has long been connected. He was educated from 1869 at the Rev. Edward Power's private school at 3 Harrington Street, Dublin. In 1875 he removed to the school of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and attended the City of Dublin Hospital; at a later date he studied at the Richmond, Whitworth, and Hardwicke Hospitals as an intern surgical pupil for six months. He became a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1878, and of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland, and a licentiate in midwifery in 1879. For a time he acted as dispensary medical officer at Ballybay in co. Monaghan, and as surgeon to the Eastern Dispensary at Bath. In February 1881 he was gazetted as surgeon in the army medical department. He saw service in the Tel-el-Kebir campaign of 1882, for which he received the medal and khedive's star. During the cholera epidemic in Egypt in 1883, when two-fifths of the English soldiers were prostrated by the disease, he acted as senior medical officer at the Helouan cholera camp near Cairo. His report on this epidemic won the especial approbation of Surgeon-general Irvine. He served in the Nile expedition in 1884–5, and accompanied the desert column sent to rescue Gordon, marching with the convoy for Gadkul under Colonel Stanley-Clarke, and taking part in all the engagements which occurred in crossing the Bayuda desert. He was present at Abu Klea on 17 Jan., in charge of the naval brigade under Lord Charles Beresford, when, out of five officers, two were killed and two wounded, he alone being unhurt. He was at the action of Gubat on 19 Jan. and at the reconnaissance at Metammeh on 21 Jan., but he did not accompany the steamers to Khartoum. For these services he received two clasps. After the Nile expedition he was employed at Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt.
Towards the end of January 1887, when stationed at Alexandria, he offered to accompany, as an unpaid volunteer, the African expedition formed under the leadership of Henry Morton (afterwards Sir Henry Morton) Stanley for the relief of Emin Pasha. In February he was selected by Stanley to accompany the expedition, obtained the necessary leave, and was duly commissioned by the khedive. On 4 Feb. he set sail with his new commander for Zanzibar, where the main body of the expeditionary force was collected. They went from Zanzibar by sea round the Cape of Good Hope, and thence to the mouth of the Congo. They ascended the lower river to the head of its navigation in steamers, and thence marched overland for two hundred miles to Stanley Pool. From that place there was a long river voyage up the Congo, and its affluent, the Aruwimi—nearly a thousand miles in all—to the point on the latter selected by Stanley as his base. Here an entrenched camp was formed, and the famous march into the Congo forest was commenced.
Throughout the expedition, in addition to all his medical and sanitary responsibilities, Parke commanded his own company, and proved himself as efficient as any in the management of men. Mr. Stanley asserted that without Parke the expedition would have
