Born at Millbrook, Cornwall, on February 18th, 1811, the son of William Rendle, of Polperro, near Fowey, by his wife Mary, daughter of William and Dorothy Johns. He was educated at the British and Foreign Training School, Borough Road, Southwark, having been brought from Fowey by his father in a trading vessel which took six weeks to make the voyage. He became a student at the Webb Street School of Medicine and at Guy's Hospital. He practised for nearly fifty years in Southwark, and was appointed the first Medical Officer of Health for the parish of St George the Martyr, Southwark, in 1856, filling the post until 1859. He lived at Treverbyn, Forest Hill, and died there on September 18th, 1893, leaving issue four sons and one daughter, of whom the second son, Richard (qv), became a FRCS.