Eric Crook was born on 15 April near Bury, Lancashire, where his father, Thomas Ashley Crook, was a master bleacher. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and subsequently went to St Bartholomew's Hospital where he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1917. During the first world war he served in the Royal Navy as a Surgeon-Lieutenant in Malta. He proceeded FRCS in 1922 and was appointed senior registrar to Charing Cross Hospital in 1926, later joining the staff there in 1928. One year later he was appointed Dean of the Medical School, a post which he held with distinction for the next eleven years. He had a lifelong interest in anatomy and became a Fellow of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland. His main surgical interest was in rectal surgery, and later he also joined the staff of the Gordon Hospital. He was appointed President of the Proctological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1945 and gave his presidential address on the topic of non-specific intestinal granuloma. During the second world war he served at Ashridge Hospital. He was a Freemason and was appointed to the staff at the Royal Masonic Hospital, a post which gave him great pleasure. He also worked at Putney Hospital and the Florence Nightingale Hospital. He became a Member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons, and external examiner to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and Trinity College, Dublin. Eric Crook was a courteous man with a quiet, unassuming manner. He was also a fine surgeon who never hurried his operations, and in teaching he always emphasised kindness and consideration for the patient. As an administrator, he laid many of the foundations for the expansion of Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. He had married Miss Garratt in 1924 and she predeceased him by many years. He retired to live near Swanage in Dorset and died on March 31 1984 survived by his son and daughter.