Born 15 October 1864, the son of Robert Ferguson, grocer and baker, of Ballymena, Co Antrim. He was educated at the Ballymena Intermediate School and matriculated at Queen's College, Belfast, in 1881. He graduated in the Royal University of Ireland in 1867, and then practised for a time in partnership with Cuthbert Blundell Moss-Blundell at 245 South Norwood Hill, London. He acted as clinical assistant at the Samaritan Free Hospital and as gynaecological registrar at the Kensington Hospital. Having been elected surgeon to the Kensington and Fulham General Hospital, he sought to become a consulting surgeon and lived at various addresses in Queen Anne Street and Harley Street. In 1911 he left London and settled at Canterbury, where he resumed general practice as partner of F R Cassidi, MD, TCD, and was appointed surgeon to the Kent and Canterbury Hospital in 1912, a post he held until 1925 when he was made consulting surgeon. He married Gertrude Kate Williams on 5 August 1896, and had one son, James Arthur Ross Ferguson, who was killed in action at Ypres, aged 17, a lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment. Ferguson died suddenly at his house, 25 New Dover Road, Canterbury, on 2 March 1931, and was buried at St Martin's, Canterbury. He is described as a dour Ulsterman, who had quarrelled with his father on account of a stepmother. He had cut himself off from his family so completely that neither his wife nor his partner knew anything about his early history.