Born 9 July 1859 at Forest Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, son of the Rev James Samuel Blair, vicar of Killingworth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and his wife, *née* Buxton. He was educated at Durham School and having won a university scholarship in 1878 entered the University of Durham College of Medicine, Newcastle, before it moved to Orchard Street. Coming to London he took postgraduate courses at the London and St Bartholomew's Hospitals. He then determined to devote himself to the practise of ophthalmic surgery, acted as chief clinical assistant at Moorfields, surgeon to the Western Ophthalmic Hospital and clinical assistant at the Royal Eye Hospital, Southwark. He then settled in Richmond, Surrey, where he was ophthalmic surgeon to the Royal Hospital. He was also ophthalmic surgeon to the National Association for promoting the welfare of the feeble-minded. He married: (1) Miss Penny, and their son, Herbert Samuel Penny Blair, was killed at Gallipoli in 1916; (2) Mary Alice Longworth, by whom he had a son, Charles James Longworth Blair, who was admitted MRCS in 1917, and a daughter, Mary Margaret; (3) Amy Elizabeth Pern, who died in May 1939. He died on 8 July 1939 at Killingworth, Claygate, Surrey. Publications:- *Errors of refraction and their treatment*. Bristol, 1905; 2nd ed 1910. Extensive non-pigmented choroidal changes. *Trans ophthal Soc UK*. 1906, 26, 99.