Born 1 April 1854 at 43 Albion Road, Woolwich, the third child and second son of Robert Roughton, an engineer in the Royal Navy, and Sarah Clothier, his wife. Coming of Roman Catholic stock, he was educated at St Edmund's College, Ware. He received his medical education at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and served as house surgeon at the Macclesfield General Infirmary and at the Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool. He settled in general practice at New Barnet and remained there until he retired in 1919. He was medical officer of health for the East Barnet Valley Urban District, and surgeon to the Y division of the Metropolitan Police. He married Edith Mary Harwar in September 1878, but left no children, his only daughter having died at the age of eight years. Roughton died at 144 New Church Road, Hove, Sussex, on 8 November 1937. His uncle, Dr J J Roughton, was the first chairman of the Kettering Local Board. The Roughton family had been in practice at Kettering from 1710, and his cousin, John Paul Roughton, was a surgeon to the Kettering General Hospital from 1897 to 1926. John Paul Roughton (d 1938) modified Cline's leg splint, whilst he was a house surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1887, and his modification was known as Roughton's splint (see *Lancet*, 1903, 2, 323 and 434).