High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! William Halse Rivers Rivers, FRCP, FRS, (12 March 1864(1864-03-12) - 4 June 1922) was an English anthropologist, neurologist, ethnologist and psychiatrist, best known for his work with shell-shocked soldiers during World War I. Rivers' most famous patient was the poet Siegfried Sassoon. He is also famous for his participation in the Torres Straits expedition of 1898, and his consequent seminal work on the subject of kinship. Rivers was born in 1864 at Constitution Hill, Chatham, Kent, son of Elizabeth Hunt (16 October 1834- 13 November 1897) and Henry Frederick Rivers (7 January 1830 9 December 1911). Records from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries show the Rivers family to be solidly middle-class with many Cambridge, Church of England and Royal Navy associations, the most famous of which were Midshipman William Rivers and his father Gunner Rivers who both served aboard HMS Victory.