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Resource Name:
Resource Type:
External Resource
Metadata
Asset Name:
E002728 - Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916)
Title:
Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E002728
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2012-08-15
Description:
Obituary for Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Miller, George Sefton
Date of Birth:
1891
Date of Death:
8 September 1916
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS July 25th 1912

FRCS June 8th 1916

LRCP July 25th 1912

MB BS Lond 1913
Details:
Was the son of Leonard Miller, Vice-Chairman of the Miller General Hospital, London, SE. At Colfe Grammar School, Lewisham, he became head boy and won the leaving scholarship. He entered Guy's Hospital in 1907, and in 1910 gained the Junior Proficiency Prize and the Sands-Cox Scholarship in Physiology. He was Dresser to Messrs F J Stewart and L A Dunn (qv), Clinical Clerk to Sir William Hale-White and Dr Newton Pitt, House Surgeon to Sir William Arbuthnot Lane and to Mr Rowlands. He had thus won for himself the best opportunities at Guy's. For the next fifteen months he was Resident Medical Officer at Lambeth Infirmary, meanwhile attending Guy's as Chief Clinical Assistant in the Throat Department, and in December, 1914, he passed the FRCS examination, although, being but 23, he could not get the Diploma until 1916. Meanwhile he found time to become the leading spirit in the Physiological and Debating Societies, and was on the Guy's Hospital Gazette Committee. In April, 1915, he was commissioned Lieutenant RAMC, and was promoted Captain a few months before his death. After joining he was first attached to the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, and was then temporarily a Regimental MO; he was detailed to No 1 Field Ambulance. He thus experienced the two extremes of military medical life. He wrote of his military duties in a certain place as consisting of waiting in a room all the morning in case orders might arrive, and then being let off to amuse himself in a town where there was nothing to do. This caused him to apply for a transfer to a post in the most exposed of positions. Just before his death he had ridden ten miles to see if he could do anything for a fellow-officer. The following is the account by a fellow-officer under his command during the Battle of the Somme:- "A local attack was taking place which attracted very fierce retaliation on the part of the enemy artillery. Long before the enemy's artillery had abated, Miller started out with eight stretcher-bearers about 9 pm on September 8th, 1916, from the little ambulance post about a quarter of a mile behind the fire trenches. The regimental aid-post was situated practically in the front line trench and was subsequently blown in by enemy shell fire. While on his way back Miller was helping a stretcher-bearer to lift a wounded man out of a trench into the open, near High Wood, when a shell came which killed him, the patient, and the stretcher-bearer. His body was brought in with a smile on his face as if death had been instantaneous ; he was buried near the village of Mametz." His name is included in the College Roll of Honour.
Sources:
*Guy's Hosp Gaz*, 1916, XXX, 309, 353, with portrait

*Lancet*,1916, ii, 578, with portrait
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002700-E002799
Media Type:
Unknown