The second of the four sons of Sir John Fife (qv), who was the leading operator in the North of England, and a founder of the Newcastle College of Medicine. His mother was a Miss Bainbridge, and his paternal grandfather was a Scottish medical man who settled in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He entered the newly-formed Newcastle-upon-Tyne School of Medicine and Surgery in the session 1836-1837. His father was lecturing upon the Principles and Practice of Surgery, and the School had just engaged, at a rental of forty pounds a year, the Hall of the Worshipful Company of "Barber Surgeons together with Wax and Tallow Chandlers" in 'The Manors' adjoining the east end of the Jesus Hospital. He was appointed Demonstrator of Anatomy jointly with his brother, W H Fife, in October, 1843, but only held the office for a year. It is not until October, 1851, that he appears as a teacher of operative surgery in the school. This post he held until 1854, when he was appointed to teach clinical ophthalmic surgery. He was also one of the Surgeons to the Newcastle Eye and Ear Infirmary and to the Newcastle Hospital for Sick Children. Fife is described as a good general and ophthalmic surgeon with a large consulting practice as an eye specialist. He retired many years before his death, and though retaining for a time his address at 9 Hood Street, Newcastle, he withdrew eventually to a hunting seat at Croft, near Darlington, his hereditary practice passing to Christopher Samuel Jeaffreson. He was unmarried, and very like his father in appearance and manners, the latter being described in the *Dictionary of National Biography* as courtly in manner and neat in person. The father worked very hard in his profession, but the son disliked drudgery and was always glad to escape for a day with the hounds. Old Newcastle men remembered their favourite lecturer as 'Joe' Fife. He died at Croft, where he had a house as early as 1839, on February 12th, 1891.