Born in Devonport on 29 December 1879 son of W J W Waterfield, Inspector of Machinery, Royal Navy, he was educated at Plymouth College and St Bartholomew's Hospital. While at school he was in the cricket and football elevens and at St Bartholomew's, where he was also in the football eleven, he was a senior scholar, vice-president of the Abernethian Society and a student demonstrator of physiology. After qualifying with the Conjoint diploma in 1902, he served as house surgeon and ophthalmic house surgeon, obtaining the University Gold Medal in the BS examination in 1904. After being admitted to the Fellowship in 1905 he entered the Sudan Medical Service, being stationed in Khartoum from 1905 to 1909 and then in the Red Sea Province at Port Sudan from 1910 to 1915. In 1915 he was seconded as civil surgeon with the Middle East Forces, returning to the Sudan in 1919 as senior medical inspector until his retirement in 1925 when he returned to England. From 1925 to 1929 he was in partnership in a general practice in Banbury, where he was chairman of the county panel committee, and he then went to Nepal for a year as medical advisor to the Maharajah. On his return in 1930 he started on his own in practice in Bookham, Surrey where he remained for the rest of his life. While at Bookham he was chairman of the Surrey panel committee. A staunch BMA man he served on many important committees, being honorary secretary of the Surrey Branch 1931-38 and its President 1946-49; a member of Council in 1934, he was chairman of the Central Ethical Committee in 1936 and in 1934-35 chairman of the Kingston-on-Thames Division. County director and deputy chairman of the Surrey Branch of the British Red Cross Society, he was officer-in-charge of its casualty services 1939-45 and received the civil OBE in the Birthday Honours of June 1949 for his services. From 1945 to 1956 he was a direct representative on the General Medical Council, and in 1948 chairman of the medical advisory committee of the SW Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. A member of the council of the Medical Defence Society, he was also a Governor of St Thomas's Hospital and of Epsom College. An old-fashioned, patriotic radical and a devout churchman, he said that he had no time to drink, smoke or relax although envious of others who had. On receiving a salary rise to which he felt he was not entitled, while he was in the Sudan service, he used the money to endow a surgery prize at the Kitchener School of Medicine. His hobby was philately. He married in 1910 Ellen daughter of W. Crowfoot FRCS, who survived him with their three sons and one daughter. He died at his home in Bookham on 27 April 1960 aged 80, having been a Fellow for fifty-five years.