Born at Norwich of an old Norfolk family; entered St Thomas’s Hospital and was dresser to Joseph Henry Green in 1847, and later House Surgeon. During the cholera epidemic of July to September, 1849, he superintended the admission of cholera patients, and subsequently recorded his experiences. “Beyond all doubt,” he stated quite erroneously, “cholera spreads by an epidemic or atmospheric quality, and contagion has little or nothing to do with it. Hence there is nothing about the spread of cholera through pump water infected by sewage.” He acted as Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Medical School until 1855 when he was appointed Assistant Surgeon to Charing Cross Hospital. Among his seniors Hancock was the most distinguished. He lectured on comparative anatomy from 1856-1866, and on anatomy from 1866-1874, when he was appointed Lecturer on Surgery. In 1872 he became Surgeon to the hospital, and retired in 1888. His chief attention was devoted to orthopaedic surgery, on which he gained additional experience as Surgeon to the Homes for Crippled Boys and Girls. For the treatment of club-foot he advocated instrumental methods, and opposed the excessive adoption of tenotomy by the so-called subcutaneous surgery then prevailing. Scoliosis was at the time excessively common among girls and young women, and he elaborated a mass of devices, hardly needed at all now that girls prevent themselves from becoming the subjects of lateral curvature. Barwell wrote about antiseptic surgery, and whilst expressing appreciation of Lister’s methods, appears not to have adhered to the strictest Listerian precautions, at a time when there was no alternative way of performing an operation aseptically. Hence his recommendation to ligature the right common carotid and right subclavian artery on the distal side of an innominate aneurysm was not free from danger. Barwell used a strip of the aorta of an ox, first dried. This was a broad ligature, which when tightened round an artery did not divide the inner and middle coats. In that particular Barwell correctly anticipated the more careful aseptic procedure of Sir Charles Ballance. The danger of a septic ligation of the common carotid in its continuity was experienced when Barwell did this for a case of unilateral hypertrophy of the head and face; death followed from secondary haemorrhage. Later he described the case of a thoracic aneurysm, treated by electro-puncture, an even more hazardous way than distal ligation, of promoting intra-aneurysmal clot formation. Barwell was an enthusiastic skater at the Skating Club in the Toxophilite Gardens, Regent’s Park, and this, along with fishing, contributed to his hale old age. “No one would imagine that his trim figure and almost boyish step and carriage belonged to a man approaching 90 years of age”, said his obituary notice. His photograph is in the Fellows’ Album. After being for several years Senior Fellow of the College he died at Norwich on Dec 27th, 1916. He married Mary Diana Shuttleworth, of Preston, Lancashire; his son Harold Shuttleworth Barwell followed his father and took the FRCS diploma. Publications: *On Asiatic Cholera*, 1855. *On Aneurysm, Especially of the Thorax and Root of the Neck*, 1880; also in Ashhurst’s *Surgery*, iii. “Experience and Specimens of Ox Aorta Ligature.” – *Med.-Chir. Trans*., 1881, lxiv, 225. “Case of Unilateral Hypertrophy of the Head and Face.” [Specimen in Charing Cross Hospital Museum]. – *Pathol. Soc. Trans.*, 1881, xxxii, 282. *On the Cure of Club Foot without Cutting Tendons, and on Certain New Methods of Treating other Deformities*, 1863, 1865. *Lateral Curvature of the Spine*, 1868, 1877, 1895, 1905. The 4th and 5th editions contain a description of the scoliosis gauge for obtaining a precise measurement of all deviations. *Diseases of Joints*, 1861, 1881; also in Ashhurst’s *Surgery*, iv. An edition appeared in Philadelphia in 1861 and in New York in 1881. “Case of Thoracic Aneurysm Treated by Electro-puncture.” – *Lancet*, 1886, i, 1058.