Born on 16 August 1876 and brought up in South Africa, he was educated at Westminster School and St Thomas's Hospital where he had an outstanding career as a student. After qualifying in 1900 with the Conjoint Diploma he served as assistant house surgeon and house surgeon. In 1902 he graduated MB BS obtaining a gold medal and university scholarship in the surgery examination, and in the same year he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He became surgical registrar in 1903, a two year appointment, passing the MS examination in 1904 and being awarded a gold medal. From 1905 until 1907 he held office as resident assistant surgeon, subsequently being appointed a demonstrator of anatomy at St Thomas's and a surgeon to the Evelina Hospital. Shortly after this he was appointed surgeon to outpatients at St Thomas's. During the first world war he served from 1914 at Louvain in Belgium till 1917 when he was invalided following an attack of cellulitis of the neck. After the war he returned to St Thomas's as surgeon where he remained up to his retirement in 1936 at the age of 59. Although somewhat overshadowed in the eyes of the outside world by his contemporaries Cuthbert Wallace and Percy Sargent, Nitch was recognised within the hospital as a general surgeon of great ability, industry and conscientiousness and as an outstanding teacher of undergraduate students. With the passage of time he became more and more identified with genito-urinary surgery and it would be correct to regard him as the father of urology as a specialty at St Thomas's in having instituted a specialised out-patient department. Well known outside Britain, he was an Honorary Member of the Association d'Urologie Française, the Society Italiana di Urologia and the International Society of Urology. At home, he was an honorary member of the British Association of Urological Surgeons, a Past-President of the Sections of Urology and Surgery of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Senior Fellow of the Association of Surgeons. He acted as examiner in surgery for the Universities of London and of Wales. A tall distinctive figure, bald from early age, his ability and sense of humour made him popular with the students to many of whom he was familiarly known as Popski. As a young man he had been by no means entirely a book worm, and while a resident had been one of the highlights of the concert troup, known as the Blue Boracic Band, which entertained patients and nursing staff in the wards at Christmas. Having reached years of discretion and achieved consultant status, he belonged to a generation which regarded it as obligatory to appear in the wards correctly dressed in morning coat and striped trousers, latterly adding the concession of a long white coat. He abhorred slovenliness on the part of his dressers, who formed a not unimportant link in the surgical team and who were individually responsible for the welfare of a proportion of the ward cases. During their six months apprenticeship they could expect to receive, with their house surgeon, an invitation to dine at 69 Harley Street and, possibly, to attend a musical soirée where such famous artists as Segovia, the guitarist, were wont to entertain. In spite of a career punctuated by periods of severe illness, Nitch was an indefatigable worker with a large private practice but at the same time punctilious in his attendance at the hospital. Except during his summer holidays he was seldom out of London, and was available to any patient, private or public in an emergency. It was usual to see his large Minerva coupé de ville, which he drove himself on the day of rest, outside the hospital on a Sunday morning. His principal relaxations were golf, motoring and during his summer holiday, yachting on the Norfolk Broads at Ludham. After retirement he lived first at Hellingly in Sussex and later at Yeovil where he died on 17 September 1969 at the age of 93. He married in 1907 Amy, daughter of Surgeon Major J L Bryden IMS by whom he had two daughters and a son. His later years were saddened by the death of his son while an undergraduate at Oxford and the tragic loss of his younger daughter's fiancée on the eve of her wedding. His wife died in 1957, but he was survived by his two daughters.