Born at Melksham, Wiltshire, the third son of the Rev James Taylor, of Lewes, Sussex. He was educated at Kingswood School and at Charing Cross Hospital, where he was Assistant Demonstrator of Anatomy, Resident Surgical Officer, and Resident Medical Officer. In 1877 he settled in Birmingham as Medical Officer to the Provident Dispensary at Camp Hill, a locality where he also entered into private practice. He early determined, however, to give up general practice for gynaecology, and in 1884 was appointed Surgeon to the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women, where he became Chief Assistant to Lawson Tait (qv). There is no doubt that the association with Tait, the contact with his genius and originality, and the chances afforded by association in his vast surgical practice, had an important influence upon Taylor. A striking comparison between Tait and Taylor is instituted by the latter's biographer in the *Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology* (1910, xvii, 883). Taylor succeeded Tait as Professor of Gynaecology at Queen's College, Birmingham, in 1899, and when the University of Birmingham was instituted in 1900 he became the first Professor of the same subject in that institution. Two years before his death he began to fail in health, and he died of chronic heart disease at his residence, 22 Newhall Street, Birmingham, on February 26th or 27th, 1910. He was buried on March 2nd, in Northfield Cemetery, Worcestershire. In 1889 he married Florence M Buxton, daughter of J Holmes Buxton, MRCS, of London, who survived him, with two sons and three daughters. Good portraits of Taylor accompany his biographies in the *Birmingham Medical Review* and *British Medical Journal*. He was President of the Midland Medical Society in 1897-1898, and in 1904 was Vice-President of the Obstetrical Society of London. He delivered the Introductory Address at the opening of the Medical Session at Charing Cross Hospital in 1901, and was shortly afterwards appointed a Governor of the institution. Publications:- "On Pyosalpinx." - *Lancet*, 1889, ii, 581. "On Dress in Relation to Certain Diseases of Women." - *Med Annual*, 1889, 509. "On Concealed Pyosalpinx." - *Lancet*, 1894, i, 996. *Extra-uterine Pregnancy, a Clinical and Operative Study*, 8vo, London, 1899. An authoritative work. *On the Diminishing Birth-rate: Presidential Address delivered before the British Gynaecological Society*, 11 Feb, 1904, 8vo, London, 1904. Update: See below for an updated and expanded version of the published obituary uploaded 20 January 2025 John William Taylor was the first professor of gynaecology at the University of Birmingham, a consulting surgeon at the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women and the Wolverhampton Hospital for Women and a consulting gynaecological surgeon at Birmingham Skin and Lock Hospital. He was born at Melksham, Wiltshire on 27 February 1851, the youngest of five children of the Reverand James Taylor and Mary Taylor née Matcham, the daughter of William Down Matcham of Christchurch, Hampshire, and a keen diarist. He was a delicate child and was not sent away to school until he was nearly 15, when he went to Kingswood School, Bath. At 17 he became a student at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School and was articled as a pupil to a Joseph Holmes Buxton, a surgeon. He qualified in 1873. His first post was as a house surgeon at Tiverton Infirmary, where he remained for a year, regularly going to the larger hospital at Exeter for lectures and clinical work. He then went to Romsey in Hampshire, as an assistant to a doctor. In 1875 he returned to London, as an assistant demonstrator of anatomy, a resident surgical officer and a resident medical officer at Charing Cross Hospital. In 1877 he went to Birmingham on obtaining a post at the Camp Hill branch of the General Dispensary. In the same year he gained his fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and shortly afterwards set up in general practice in Moseley Road. He soon came into contact with the pioneering surgeon Lawson Tait, and, at his suggestion, applied for and obtained, in 1884, the post of surgeon at the Birmingham and Midland Hospital for Women. He gave up his general practice and became Tait’s assistant. After a time, he found it difficult working with Tait, and in 1887, according to Taylor’s wife, in the memoir she wrote of his life, ‘…felt obliged to sever this connection’. Having previously sold his general practice, he took a house in an out-of-the-way part of town large enough to take in patients and set up as a consultant and specialist in gynaecology. In 1895 he moved to a bigger house in Newhall Street, which he used as a private hospital. This was a great impetus to his practice, which grew steadily. In 1898 he gave the Ingleby Lectures at Birmingham on extra-uterine pregnancy and in the same year became president of the Midland Medical Society. The following year he became professor of gynaecology at the Mason University College, which was incorporated into the University of Birmingham in 1900. He gave the introductory address at the opening of the medical session at Charing Cross Hospital in October 1901 and was shortly afterwards appointed as a governor of the hospital. In 1904 he was vice president of the Obstetrical Society of London and in the same year became president of the British Gynaecological Society, of which he had been a member since its foundation in 1884. His presidential address covered the issue of the falling birth-rate, which he considered a grave national danger. A skilful technical surgeon, Taylor introduced many new improvements in techniques and methods of treatment and published widely. In 1895, with Frederick Edge, he published *A manual of gynaecological practice…* (London, H K Lewis), translated from the original German text by Alfred Dührssen, and in 1899 *Extra-uterine pregnancy: a clinical and operative study* (London, H K Lewis). He contributed a chapter on disorders and diseases of pregnancy to the third edition of *Quain’s dictionary of medicine* (London, Bombay, Longmans & Co, 1902) and wrote many papers in the *British Journal of Gynaecology*, the *Birmingham Medical Review*, *The Lancet* and the *British Medical Journal*. An Anglo-Catholic, since boyhood he had been musical, and he wrote and composed several hymns. In 1906 he published *The coming of the saints: imaginations and studies in early church history and tradition* (London, Methuen & Co). Written over the course of many years in intervals of his professional work, the book details the legends of the travels of Mary Magdalene, Martha, Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea in France and England. In spring 1907, Taylor developed heart problems following influenza. He retired for nine months in 1908 but returned to work. In 1909 he was forced to resign from his clinical and academic work and died on 26 February 1910, a day before his 59th birthday. A hospice, the Taylor Memorial Home of Rest, in Sparkhill, was named in his honour. After his death his wife, Florence Maberly née Buxton, the eldest daughter of the doctor to whom he had been articled in London, published a book of his poems and included a memoir of his life *The Doorkeeper and other poems* (London, Longmans, Green & Co, 1910). The Taylors had two sons and three daughters, one of whom, Alice Buxton Taylor, was a Cambridge graduate, research scientist and noted ceramicist and artist, who married the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott.