The only son of the Rev William Wilcox Clarke, was born at North Wootton Rectory, near King's Lynn, Norfolk, on March 25th, 1850. His father was rector and squire of the parish, and became Inspector of Schools, Rural Dean of Lynn, and Honorary Canon of Norwich. His mother was Lillias Bruce, the daughter of Alexander Bruce. William Bruce Clarke was educated at Brighton and Windlesham. He entered Harrow, where Henry Montague Butler was head master, in September, 1864, being in "Small Houses and Mr Middlemist's". He left at midsummer, 1869, and matriculated from Pembroke College, Oxford, on Oct 25th, 1869. He obtained 1st class biological honours in the Natural Science School in Trinity Term, 1873, but put off taking his BA degree until the following year. It was at this time, therefore, that he visited Leipzig and Würzburg, then celebrated for their biological teaching. On his return he acted as Demonstrator of Biology, more especially on its anthropotomy side, under Professor George Rolleston, FRS, in the New Museums in Oxford, and gained the Burdett Coutts University Geological Scholarship in 1875. He entered St Bartholomew's Hospital in October, 1874, where he acted as House Surgeon to Sir William Savory, FRS (qv), and as House Physician to James Andrew, MD. He was appointed Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy in 1880, becoming full Demonstrator and Demonstrator of Operative Surgery in the Medical School attached to St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1881. He became known to the students as a good teacher of the broad principles of human anatomy. He was elected Assistant Surgeon to the West London Hospital in 1881, becoming full Surgeon in 1884. He was also Surgeon to St Peter's Hospital for Stone in 1883-1884. He was elected Assistant Surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital on Dec 20th, 1883, in the vacancy caused by the unexpected death of James Shuter (qv). The contest was a severe one and was carried out on the time-honoured lines of a Parliamentary election. Bruce Clarke received 81 votes, the other candidate, Jonathan F C Macready (qv), the son of the great actor who had been Surgical Registrar, getting 49 votes; but it was not until 1902 that he came on to the full staff of the hospital, and he thus had to spend nineteen years in the out-patient room. In 1886 Clarke won the Jacksonian Prize with a dissertation on "The Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Kidney amenable to direct Surgical Interference". He added to the essay and it was published as a *Handbook of the Surgery of the Kidneys* in 1911. From 1889 he lectured on anatomy, and resigned the post in 1903 when he was appointed Lecturer on Surgery. For some years he acted jointly with W Harrison Cripps (qv) as Surgeon to 'Martha' ward, where he was responsible for ovariotomy and other abdominal operations which were not then undertaken by the physicians-accoucheur. He resigned all his offices at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1912 on the ground of ill health, and was elected a Governor and Consulting Surgeon. In 1896-1897 he was President of the West London Medical and Chirurgical Society, and was Vice-President of the Section of Surgery when the British Medical Association met at Oxford in 1904. At the Royal College of Surgeons Bruce Clarke acted as a Member of the Board of Anatomy for the Fellowship in 1889 and was a Member of the Court of Examiners from 1905-1910. He was a Member of Council from 1907-1913. He married: (1) Effie (d.1909), daughter of the Rev J Berryman, and had by her one son, William Robert Bruce Clarke, who, like his father, went to 'Small Houses', Harrow School, at Midsummer, 1900. He died shortly after his father of influenza, whilst on short leave from the front. (2) Agnes Mary, daughter of George Mayor Jackson, who survived him. He died of pneumonia at Eastbourne on March 28th, 1914, his last years being devoted to the restoration of an old stone-built farmhouse at Lea, North Wilts, which he did not live to inhabit. Bruce Clarke was a good surgeon, a good operator, and a good teacher. He was unfortunate in the time of his birth. If he had been born five years earlier, he would have shone as a surgeon of the old school; born five years later, he would have been a pioneer in antiseptic surgery. He belonged to the intermediate period. As a man and as an administrator he was altogether excellent; honest and upright in all his dealings, he set an example to the students of the large school to which he was attached. He was a great walker and would often walk from Oxford to London in a day. A favourite Sunday walk, with Dr George Gulliver or some other congenial friend, was to start from Windsor, through the Queen's Ride and Ascot, to Woking, in the days when there were no bicycles and no cars, to both of which he became addicted, for he loved an engineer's workshop. He had considerable mechanical ingenuity, and was thus well fitted for the post of Surgeon to the Orthopaedic Department which he held at St Bartholomew's Hospital and resigned in 1903. He was an expert boxer, whence he derived his name of 'The Bruiser' by which he was generally known to the students, and it is reported of him that after breaking the jaw of a rough who would have molested him, he admitted him into one of his own beds and cured him.