Born in Beaumont Street and entered as a student at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he gained the favourable notice of John Abernethy, and subsequently of Amussat, under whom he studied anatomy in Paris. He was for a time Surgeon to the Islington Dispensary. In 1841 he settled in Toronto and was appointed Professor of Surgery in King’s College, now the University, in 1843, retaining the Chair until 1853, acting at the same time as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He succeeded Dr Widmer as Consulting Surgeon to the Toronto General Hospital, and had charge of the hospital at Port Colborne during the Fenian raid in 1866. Whilst he was Surgeon to the Islington Dispensary he invented an instrument for the insertion of quilled sutures in cases of vesicovaginal fistula. It is described and figured in the *London Medical Gazette*, 1836-7, xix, 335, and also in *Medico-Chirurgical Transactions*, 1838, xxi, 29, P1. 1. The instrument had scissor handles and lock, the blades were curved like calipers; one blade ended as a curved pointed-eyed needle and was armed with a loop of thread. The other arm ended in a slot. On closing the instrument the pointed end penetrated the two margins of the fissure and carried the suture loop through the slot. On the outer side of the slot was a slide ending in a blunt point, which being pushed down, the point passed into and held the loop as the instrument was reopened. A quill could be passed through the loop, and the free ends of the sutures were then knotted over a second quill on the opposite side of the approximated fissures. The title of the paper in the *Medico-Chirurgical Transactions* adds a use for cleft palate. The operation was limited to the soft palate of young children. For this the instrument appears unsuitable. But Beaumont invented a modification, or rather a different instrument altogether, of which an example is preserved in the College Museum (D 34), entitled “Beaumont's Sewing Machine Suture Carrier for Operations on Cleft Palate”. It is a straight instrument carrying a needle, like the present sewing-machine needle armed with thread; the thread was caught by a fine hook and held as the needle was drawn back. At right angles are two flat jaws closing like a bracket by pushing down a slide. These grasped the margins of the cleft palate, and the needle carried the loop of thread through them. The hook held the loop as the needle was withdrawn, and on shifting the grasp on the palate and again protruding the needle, a chain stitch was made by the second loop passing through the first. This is apparently the instrument referred to by Sir James Paget as tried by Mr Lawrence at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. An annotation in the *Lancet*, 1866, i, 302, stated that Singer took his idea from the Beaumont instrument exhibited in the shop of Freeman, a surgical instrument maker in New York. But the statement is not confirmed by the *Encyclopoedia Britannica*, Art. “Sewing Machine”. (*Vide* A E J Barker.) Beaumont also described and figured in the *London Medical Gazette*, 1837, xx, 122 (Figs. 1, 2) a vaginal speculum which revived an idea found in Hippocrates. He had used it in his vesicovaginal fistula operations. Five steel blades were hinged at one of their ends, much as the ribs of an umbrella. The place of the projecting stick of the umbrella was taken by a rounded cap, over the ends of the blades. After the instrument had been passed closed into the vagina, a handle occupying the place of the stick of an umbrella, was rotated to separate the blades, after which the handle was withdrawn and the fistula came into view between two of the separated blades. Beaumont also published papers in 1833, “On the Treatment of Fracture of the Leg and Forearm by Plaster of Paris”, and in 1838, “On Polypi of the Uterus, Nose, and Ear”. In 1841 he went to Canada, and in 1843 was elected Surgeon to the University, then of King’s College, later of Toronto; and Surgeon to the Toronto General Hospital, where he gave Clinical Lectures. He described in the *Medico-Chirurgical Transactions*, 1850, xxxiii, 241, with woodcut, the case of a boy, aged 7, from whom he had removed a cartilaginous tumour weighing 8 oz and measuring 3 4/16 x 2 8/10 in in diameter. The tumour first noticed three months before, being then the size of a nutmeg, had replaced completely the left side of the mandible, except the condyle and its neck, as far forwards as the second bicuspid tooth. The boy healed quickly after disarticulation of the left half of the lower jaw. Increasing difficulty of vision ending in blindness enforced Beaumont’s retirement in 1873, and he was elected Emeritus Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He died on Oct 13th, 1875, in Toronto. Beaumont was an accomplished anatomist, perfectly versed in surgery, most painstaking and correct in diagnosis, most skilful in the use of the knife, engrossed in his subject, and capable of communicating knowledge. As a man he was singularly polite, as gentle as a woman, neat in person, and possessed of a charity which thinketh no evil. His work at the Toronto General Hospital, where he delivered his clinical lectures, was worthy of his great teacher Abernethy. Publications: In addition to the articles already mentioned, Beaumont also published: Clinical lectures on *Traumatic Carotid Aneurysms*, 1854, and on *The Several Forms of Lithotomy*, 1857. Beaumont’s Lithotomy Knife is preserved in the Museum of the College (G 106 and 8). In the *Med.-Chir. Trans.*, 1863, xlvi., 174, drawing, p.176, Beaumont described a variation of Langenbeck’s and Graefe’s iridectomy hook or forceps. A fine pointed hook protected by a guard was passed through a corneal puncture, and on withdrawing the guard the hook caught in the iris. In 1862 he described a wound of the orbit penetrating 5 1/2 in, yet followed by recovery.