The third son of the Rev W W Rouch, Wesleyan minister, of Bristol; after going to the Wesleyan School, Kingswood, he studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he gained the Junior and Senior scholarships, as well as the Gold Medals of the Society of Apothecaries in botany and in materia medica and therapeutics in 1867. He was House Surgeon at the Bradford Infirmary during the years 1869 and 1870. In 1871 he was elected Surgeon to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, but within a few months moved to Coventry and was elected Surgeon to the Warwickshire Hospital. In a short time he began to show signs of kidney disease and went on a voyage to Queensland. He became rapidly worse on the voyage, and died after the arrival of the vessel, at the Queen's Hotel, Rockhampton, on April 7th, 1873.