Son of William Colborne, MRCS, whose family had for centuries been settled in Chippenham, where they held an honoured position. William Henry Colborne was educated at University College in the years 1842-1845, and was House Surgeon to Robert Liston (qv). Joining his father in his long-established practice at Chippenham, he soon won a high position both as a medical and public man. At the time of his death he was President-Elect of the Bath and Bristol Branch of the British Medical Association, Vice-President of the Poor-Law Medical Officers' Association, in the work of which he took much interest, a member of the Chippenham Town Council, and probable Mayor of the borough in a year's time. *The Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette*, in a notice of his death from typhoid, which occurred at Chippenham on September 27th, 1869, wrote as follows: "A more kindly disposed and amiable man - a man more full of anxiety for his patients - more charitable to the poor, both with purse and medicine, more ready to help them to the attainment of health and contentment by the warm interest he took in all that concerned them - never lived." At his death he left a widow and seven children, of whom the eldest was only sixteen. His father had died the year before at an advanced age.