Born on January 19th, 1818, at Palamcottah, Madras District, where his father was Military Chaplain. He was a descendant of John Hough (1651-1743), Bishop of Worcester and of Oxford, who was President of Magdalen College when James II endeavoured to foist a Roman Catholic upon the Society. The mother of James Hough was Elizabeth, third daughter of Thomas and Mary Pattinson, Kirklinton, Cumberland, and she left her son in the charge of her parents on her return to India with her husband in 1823. Hough was educated at Christ's Hospital, and at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals, after which he at once went to Cambridge as assistant to Dr Fawcett, subsequently as partner, until Fawcett's retirement in 1882. Hough then took into partnership his eldest son, James Hayward Hough, MA Cantab, but it was a great blow to the father when his son died in 1893. Dr E Lloyd Jones joined him in partnership in 1894, until Hough retired in 1896. Hough was a kindly practitioner, known best as 'the Accoucheur' at Cambridge. A Justice of the Peace for the Borough of Cambridge, he was also active in politics as a leader of the Conservative Party, which in 1886 presented him with a buggy, and this, with the kindly surgeon inside the hood, became a familiar object driving about Cambridge. Success in subsequent elections was marked again in 1899 by an illuminated address to Hough. He was churchwarden of St Benedict's Church, and resisted an attempt to get it closed by efforts which ended in its restoration. The congregation presented Hough with a work on Architecture at Cambridge and Eton, together with a purse containing £40. He was treasurer of a number of Missionary Societies, and chairman of the Cambridge Express Newspaper Company. He had continued his active work in connection with his various societies, when he developed a carbuncle, and died on December 28th, 1900, at Grange Road, Cambridge. He was buried at Milbroad Cemetery. By his marriage in 1846 with Eliza Sophia, daughter of W W Hayward, of Cambridge, he had four sons and four daughters, of whom three sons and two daughters survived him. Two of the sons were in Holy Orders, and one, Charles Henry Hough, MRCS, was in practice at Derby.