Born at Southampton in 1884, he was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took third-class honours in Natural Sciences (1905), and won an exhibition to Guy's Hospital, where he was house surgeon to Sir Charles Symonds. Crook settled in practice in partnership with Dr Astley Roberts at Eastbourne, Sussex, where he was appointed assistant medical officer to the Princess Alice Hospital. During the war of 1914-18 he served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy at Antwerp, at Gallipoli where he was mentioned in dispatches, and afterwards in France and Ireland. He returned to his practice at Eastbourne, was appointed surgeon to his hospital in 1932, and was fracture surgeon from 1936 till his retirement in 1951. On the formation of the National Health Service in 1948 he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon to the Eastbourne group of hospitals. He married Margaret Witherbee in 1913, and died at 2 Chiswick Place, Eastbourne, on 19 January 1957 aged 72, survived by his wife with their daughter and three sons. Crook was one of the founders of the Eastbourne Sailing Club in 1933. He had been captain of an Association football XI at Cambridge and played in the Guy's Rugby XV.