Born 19 March 1871, at Stanhope, Durham, eldest child of the Rev G W Butler, of Broadmayne with West Knighton, Dorset, and his wife Elizabeth Oldfield, adopted daughter of the Rev George Harrison. He was educated at Dorchester Grammar School, at St Paul's School, where he was an exhibitioner, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, of which he was a scholar in 1889. He rowed in his College eight and took first-class honours in the final school of natural science in 1893. He received his clinical training at St Bartholomew's, where he served as house surgeon, and was also house physician at the Royal Free Hospital. In 1896 he was awarded a Radcliffe travelling Fellowship, and undertook postgraduate study at Kiel, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Zurich, and Paris. He then went to South Africa and served as harbour medical officer at Port Elizabeth, and as plague officer at Durban and at the Cape of Good Hope. He was awarded the Oxford doctorate for his thesis on plague in 1902. From 1902 to 1906 he was assistant surgeon at the British Ophthalmic Hospital at Jerusalem, and turned decisively to the specialty, which he notably adorned for the rest of his life. Butler then settled in Warwickshire, living at Duclair, Marsh Lane, Hampton-in-Arden, with consulting rooms at 61 Newhall Street, Birmingham, at 27 Warwick Place, Leamington, and at 7 Park Road, Coventry. He became in due course ophthalmic surgeon to the Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital 1909, the Warneford Hospital, Leamington 1910, and the Hospital of St Cross, Rugby 1918, and surgeon to the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital 1913, and was ultimately on the consulting staff of each of these hospitals, retiring in 1932. He was also ophthalmic surgeon to the West Bromwich Hospital. During the war years 1939-44 he replaced his son, R D W Butler, MRCS, who was on active service, as surgeon at the Birmingham Eye Hospital. Butler took an active part in the work of the Oxford ophthalmological conference, serving on its council from 1917, and of the Ophthalmological Society of the United Kingdom, of which he became president. He gave the Middlemore lectures in 1915, 1922, and 1939, and was Montgomery lecturer in Dublin in 1926. In 1924 he was Doyne memorial medallist and lecturer. Butler served as president of the ophthalmology section at the Royal Society of Medicine; in the British Medical Association he was vice-president of the section of ophthalmology at the Nottingham meeting 1926 and afterwards its president, and a member of the ophthalmic group committee 1923-45; he also served as president of the Birmingham branch. He was secretary of the Midland Ophthalmological Society for twenty-eight years and its president 1919-21. Butler was elected to the Fellowship of the College, as a member of twenty years' standing, in 1941. Butler's interests in ophthalmology were wide and he made many contributions to its literature. His Illustrated guide to the slit-lamp, 1927, was the first English book on the subject and did much to popularize its use; with characteristic modesty he always called it "the child's guide to knowledge". Butler was a good artist and illustrated his own books. Butler married in March 1900 Ellen, daughter of Walter Hugo Reed, MD, of Westbury, Wilts, who survived him with two sons and three daughters; both sons were serving as medical men with the forces in the world war of 1939-45. He died suddenly at Hampton-in-Arden on 29 January 1945, aged 73, and was privately cremated. Butler was a man of wide attainments and experience, of happy disposition and rare humanity. He did much to unite the members of his specialty in the Midlands. Heavily built, his appearance of rough strength belied his intellectual and artistic distinction. His benignity and bonhomie made him a centre of affection and gaiety to a wide circle of friends. At professional meetings he showed remarkable insight in choosing subjects for discussion, which provoked the widest interest. Butler was always ready to acknowledge and even exaggerate his own failures and shortcomings in the hope of awakening constructive improvements in methods or technique. His chief recreation was yachting and he was well known as a designer of yachts and a writer in the yachting journals. He was a member of the Royal Cruising Club, the Corinthian Yacht Club and the Little Ship Club, and an Associate Member of the Institution of Naval Architects. Publications:- Refraction. *Brit med J*. 1923, 1, 843. Ophthalmology in Palestine. *Birm med Review*, 1916, 79, 29 and 59. Tuberculous disease of the uvea. *Ibid*. 1912, 71, 216. Treatment of trichiasis. *Arch Ophthal*. 1908, 37, 388. *Illustrated guide to the slit-lamp*. Oxford, 1927. Lenticonus posterior. *Arch Ophthal*. 1930, 3, 425. Iridencleisis and trapdoor iridectomy in treatment of glaucoma. *Brit J Ophthal*. 1932, 16, 741.