The son of G B Franklin, who conducted a well-known boys' school at Stoney-gate, Leicester. He was educated partly at his father's school and partly at Leatherhead, and received his professional training at St Thomas's Hospital, where he was House Surgeon and Resident Accoucheur (1870-1871). He was Resident Medical Officer of the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest from 1871-1874, and then began to practise in Leicester, deciding to prescribe and not dispense - a course which most of those then in practice in the city considered impossible for success. He was helped at the outset by Dr John Barclay. He became Surgeon to the Leicester Provident Dispensary in 1875, but resigned in 1880 owing to the growth of his practice, which was largely concerned with midwifery. He was appointed Surgeon to the Leicester Royal Infirmary in 1886, and retained the post for twenty years, when he retired under the age limit. At the anniversary meeting on March 27th, 1906, he was appointed Consulting Surgeon, and a tribute was then paid to his services, distinguished ability, and devotion to the Infirmary during his long period of office. On April 25th he was entertained to dinner by his local colleagues and many prominent. Citizens, Dr F M Pope being Chairman, and Sir Edward Wood, Chairman of the Board of the Infirmary, proposing his health. He was Surgeon to the Midland and L & NW Railways, and Vice-President of the paying hospital for working-class patients in Leicester, in the foundation of which he had been much interested. He was unanimously designated as President at the Leicester Meeting of the British Medical Association in 1905. His presidential address reviewed medical education, past and present, but dealt specially with the want of appreciation of the importance of education in obstetric (medicine and surgery, a remedy of which his efforts bore fruit. He also insisted on the importance of at least a year's service as house officer at some hospital before the new practitioner entered upon independent practice. He attended the Toronto Meeting in 1906, inducting his successor, Professor R A Reeve, and himself receiving the Hon LLD of the University. He was keenly interested in the well-being of Leicester, was early in life a member of the Town Council, and President of many societies, medical, scientific, and musical. In 1910 he retired from practice owing to failing health. He settled at 18 High Street, Fareham, Hants, in 1912, and did much public work. He was a Governor of Price's School, and on the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 he became Commandant and Medical Officer of the Hawkstone Red Cross Hospital with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel RAMC (T), and was for some time also Medical Officer of the Lady Keyes's Fareham House Hospital and of the St John Hospital, Fareham. After the closing of the Hawkstone Hospital he served on the local Medical Board of the Ministry of National Service. He was in the first list of MBEs on the establishment of the Order of the British Empire in 1917. He died at Fareham on June 2nd, 1919, and was buried there. He was survived by Mrs Franklin, two daughters, and two sons - Major G D Franklin, IMS, and Commander H G C Franklin, RN. Publications: *Report on the Epidemic Diarrhoea of 1875 (Borough of Leicester)* (with Dr W Elgar Buck), 8vo, 4 charts, Leicester, 1875. "Death from Puncture of the Brain by a Crochet Hook." - *Lancet*, 1876, I, 667.