Born 16 December 1913, the son of Isaac Shedletysky, embroiderer, and Annetta Shinsky, his wife. As a schoolboy at the Regent Street Polytechnic he used the name Henry Stanley, but on his mother's remarriage when he was fifteen he assumed his step-father's surname of Joseph by deed poll. He took his medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he served as casualty house surgeon, and was afterwards resident surgical officer at the Dreadnought Hospital, Greenwich, and resident surgical registrar at the Bolingbroke Hospital. During the war of 1939-45 he served in the RAMC in France, India, and Burma, attaining the rank of major. He took the Fellowship in 1943. Joseph died suddenly in Australia on 8 September 1947, aged 33; he was unmarried.