Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916)
by
 
Royal College of Surgeons of England

Asset Name
E002728 - Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916)

Title
Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916)

Author
Royal College of Surgeons of England

Identifier
RCS: E002728

Publisher
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England

Publication Date
2012-08-15

Subject
Medical Obituaries

Description
Obituary for Miller, George Sefton (1891 - 1916), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Language
English

Source
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows

Full Name
Miller, George Sefton

Date of Birth
1891

Date of Death
8 September 1916

Occupation
General surgeon

Titles/Qualifications
MRCS July 25th 1912
 
FRCS June 8th 1916
 
LRCP July 25th 1912
 
MB BS Lond 1913

Details
Was the son of Leonard Miller, Vice-Chairman of the Miller General Hospital, London, SE. At Colfe Grammar School, Lewisham, he became head boy and won the leaving scholarship. He entered Guy's Hospital in 1907, and in 1910 gained the Junior Proficiency Prize and the Sands-Cox Scholarship in Physiology. He was Dresser to Messrs F J Stewart and L A Dunn (qv), Clinical Clerk to Sir William Hale-White and Dr Newton Pitt, House Surgeon to Sir William Arbuthnot Lane and to Mr Rowlands. He had thus won for himself the best opportunities at Guy's. For the next fifteen months he was Resident Medical Officer at Lambeth Infirmary, meanwhile attending Guy's as Chief Clinical Assistant in the Throat Department, and in December, 1914, he passed the FRCS examination, although, being but 23, he could not get the Diploma until 1916. Meanwhile he found time to become the leading spirit in the Physiological and Debating Societies, and was on the Guy's Hospital Gazette Committee. In April, 1915, he was commissioned Lieutenant RAMC, and was promoted Captain a few months before his death. After joining he was first attached to the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, and was then temporarily a Regimental MO; he was detailed to No 1 Field Ambulance. He thus experienced the two extremes of military medical life. He wrote of his military duties in a certain place as consisting of waiting in a room all the morning in case orders might arrive, and then being let off to amuse himself in a town where there was nothing to do. This caused him to apply for a transfer to a post in the most exposed of positions. Just before his death he had ridden ten miles to see if he could do anything for a fellow-officer. The following is the account by a fellow-officer under his command during the Battle of the Somme:- "A local attack was taking place which attracted very fierce retaliation on the part of the enemy artillery. Long before the enemy's artillery had abated, Miller started out with eight stretcher-bearers about 9 pm on September 8th, 1916, from the little ambulance post about a quarter of a mile behind the fire trenches. The regimental aid-post was situated practically in the front line trench and was subsequently blown in by enemy shell fire. While on his way back Miller was helping a stretcher-bearer to lift a wounded man out of a trench into the open, near High Wood, when a shell came which killed him, the patient, and the stretcher-bearer. His body was brought in with a smile on his face as if death had been instantaneous ; he was buried near the village of Mametz." His name is included in the College Roll of Honour.

Sources
*Guy's Hosp Gaz*, 1916, XXX, 309, 353, with portrait
 
*Lancet*,1916, ii, 578, with portrait

Rights
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England

Collection
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows

Format
Obituary

Format
Asset

Asset Path
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002700-E002799

URL for File
374911

Media Type
Unknown