Born at Llanelly, Carmarthenshire on 8 November 1885 the fifth child and second son of John Wade, chemist, and his wife née Williams, he was educated at Llanelly County School and the University College of South Wales, Cardiff and at Charing Cross Hospital, where he was house surgeon. After taking the Fellowship and the London MS he went back to Cardiff to practise surgery; he was appointed clinical assistant at King Edward VII Hospital and demonstrator of anatomy in the medical school from 1913. After retirement from practice he again helped in the teaching of anatomy. During the war of 1914-18 he was consulting surgeon to the Prince of Wales Hospital for limbless soldiers and sailors at Cardiff, and was created OBE for his services. He practised privately at 25 Park Place, Cardiff. He was appointed in 1920 assistant surgeon to King Edward's Hospital, which became the Royal Infirmary in 1923, and was afterwards senior surgeon for ten years. "Jimmy" Wade was consulting surgeon to many of the miners' hospitals in the industrial valleys, such as Aberavon, Caerphilly, Cardigan, and Pontypool, and the cottage hospitals at Bridgend, Mountain Ash, Pontypridd, and Porth. This entailed a life of arduous travelling by car along country roads, which he stood well though never robust. He had a confident and cheerful outlook on the troubles of his day, and faced the illness of his last years with courage. Wade married in 1913 Kate Jones, who survived him with four sons, three of them surgeons and one a physician; one of them J S H Wade MC, FRCS, succeeded him on the staff of the Royal Infirmary. He died at Cardiff on 9 July 1952 aged 66.