Born 17 January 1881 at Womersley vicarage near Pontefract, the seventh child and fifth son of the Rev Prebendary Joseph Henry Brierley and his wife Ellen, daughter of T P Teale (1801-67) FRCS 1843, the well-known Leeds surgeon, and sister of T Pridgin Teale (1831-1923) FRCS 1857, the hygienist, and of J W Teale (1838-97), FRCS 1865. He was educated at Cheltenham College, where he was in Southwood House, and at the Leeds Medical School, graduating from the Victoria University in 1904, the year before the establishment of the Leeds University. He took the Leeds degrees and the Conjoint qualification in 1905. After further work at the London and King's College Hospitals he took the Fellowship in 1907. He was commissioned a lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service on 1 February 1908, having passed-in first of fifty-seven candidates. He was promoted captain in 1911, major in 1920, and lieutenant-colonel in 1928, with which rank he retired in 1932. He then settled on his estate in Kenya, East Africa, where he was a pioneer in the planting of coffee, tea, and kapok. He married on 2 September 1936 Mrs Norah Lindsay, *née* Ball, who survived him but there were no children of the marriage. Mrs Brierley's eldest son by her first marriage was killed in action as a Spitfire pilot over Malta on 23 October 1942. Brierley died on his coffee estate, Kitamaiyu, Ruiru, Kenya on 11 September 1942, aged 61.