Studied medicine at King's College and Middlesex Hospitals, and began practice in Old Broad Street, City of London, from 1835. He was led to the study of bodily deformities by acting as Surgeon to the Society for Diseases of the Spine and Hip, and as Assistant Surgeon to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. He was Lecturer on Practical Anatomy at the Hunterian School of Medicine in 1851, Surgeon to the City Orthopaedic Hospital from its foundation in 1851, and Surgeon to the Metropolitan Free Hospital for eighteen years. Upon this variety of experience is based his book: *On the Nature, Causes, Variety and Treatment of Bodily Deformities* in a series of lectures delivered at the City Orthopaedic Hospital in 1852. Part I was published in London in 1862. Part II remained in MS until John Poland published it with a second division of Part I in 1905. Poland had been his colleague at the City Orthopaedic Hospital. The work is remarkable for the excellent drawings by Chance. The Introduction gives an historical account of the development of the special sections of Surgery, Military, Ophthalmic, Orthopaedic, and of Special Hospitals. Chance's *Bodily Deformities* is of permanent importance as including early orthopaedic history. Late in life he removed to Russell Square, Bloomsbury, where he died on February 25th, 1895. Publications: In addition to *Bodily Deformities* mentioned above, Chance also published Cases of Abscess in the Heart, of Extroversion of the Bladder, and of Injury to the Brain, Consciousness persisting.