Educated at St George's Hospital and Edinburgh. He was first in general medical practice at Uxbridge, then practised as a dental surgeon in London. He was actively associated with the foundation of the Dental Hospital, the Odontological Society, and the institution of the Licence for Dental Surgery by the Royal College of Surgeons. He was one of the first Surgeons at the Hospital; was the fourth President of the Odontological Society; Examiner in Dental Surgery from 1865-1870; and Surgeon to the London Institution for Diseases of the Teeth, which he founded in conjunction with Edwin Saunders (qv). He was besides Vice-President and Librarian of the Medical Society, Corresponding Fellow of the Chirurgical Academy of Madrid, and a member of the Central Society of German Dentists. Throughout his life he was a prime mover in anything which tended to elevate dentistry into a profession. He died at 10 Keppel Street on April 23rd, 1873. There is a three-quarter-length oil painting of him in the Royal Society of Medicine and a photograph in the College Collection.