Ambrose Edgar Woodall was born in Eccles, Lancashire on 24 April 1885, the second son of the Reverend Samuel Russell Woodall, a Primitive Methodist minister. He was educated at Manchester Central High School and having won a science scholarship from Lancashire County Council, he became a student of Manchester University, graduating BSc in 1905 and MB ChB in 1908, winning the Renshaw Exhibition, the Bradley Surgical Prize and the Leech Junior Research Fellowship. He then spent a year as a demonstrator in physiology and a further year as a research fellow, graduating MSc in 1909 and MD in 1911. He held various resident posts at Manchester Royal Infirmary from 1910 to 1913 before enlarging his experience at the London and St Bartholomew's Hospitals. He served in the RAMC from 1915 to 1919 and after obtaining the FRCS in 1916, he went to France and later to Italy before returning to London as resident surgeon to the Manor House Hospital, a post he held from 1920 to 1958. During these years he was medical advisor to the National Union of Railwaymen and other trade unions and an 'expert medical witness'. He was surgical specialist to the Ministry of Pensions from 1921 to 1924. His knighthood, conferred in 1931, was regarded as a reward for his services to Manor House Hospital and the Trades Unions whose hospital it is. As a medical man he established a unique position in socialist circles. George Lansbury, Tom Williams, Ben Tillett and Lord Citrine were among his distinguished patients. He was a member of the Central Medical War Committee during the second world war and he was made a Baron in 1946. In 1949, at the age of 63, he married Joyce Eleanor, the widow of the Rt Hon H B Lees-Smith, PC, MP. There was no heir. He died on 2 February 1974, aged 88 years.