Born on 25 October 1902 in Southampton, the third child of John Montgomery Beattie, a merchant trading in the Far East, and Ophelia Jane, née Hunt, 'JB' was educated at The Limes School Croydon, Westminster School, and Trinity College Cambridge. He entered St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1924 where he won the Bentley prize and the Lawrence research scholarship and gold medal. He was greatly influenced by Sir Holburt Waring and Mr Harold Wilson. He qualified in 1927, was house surgeon and resident physician accoucheur, and ran the Williamson Laboratory at St Bartholomew's, where gynaecologists reported on their own material and Beattie gave his opinions on difficult cases. He obtained the FRCS in 1929 and the MD in 1933. Beattie was appointed to the staff of St Bartholomew's in 1945, where he proved a popular teacher, continuing throughout the war when evacuated to Friern Barnet Hospital. He was joint editor of *Ten Teachers* in midwifery and gynaecology. His interests outside medicine lay in fishing, sailing, ornitholgy and gardening: he contributed to the Royal Horticultural Society's *Garden Journal* and received the accolade of election to the Garden Society. In 1935 he married Marjorie Gertrude Baddeley, who died in 1978; they had no children. In late retirement he married Dorothy, his former secretary. He died at home in Reigate, crippled by arthritis, on 5 January 1993, aged 90.