William Stewart Dickie was born in Glasgow on 10 December 1872. He began work as an office boy in an iron foundry at the age of 13, but when he was 15 he decided to go to sea and sailed as an apprentice in the four-master *Madagascar*. He took his second mate's certificate and his chief officer's examination, and then set sail in the *Kaffir Prince* expecting to sit for his master's certificate on his return. Unfortunately new eye-testing regulations came into force meanwhile and he failed. Dickie then decided, at the age of 22, to become a doctor and he studied medicine at the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, St Bartholomew's Hospital and Berlin. He received the John Reid prize for two years for his outstanding work on 'The structure of the miliary tubercle'. At Glasgow he served as house-surgeon to Sir David McVail and to J Hogarth Pringle who was to have a profound influence on his life. Later he went to Middlesbrough as assistant to Finlay Munro MB, but on gaining the FRCS in 1903 he gave up general practice and was appointed surgeon to the North Riding Infirmary and to other hospitals in the area. In 1909 Dickie built a small nursing home. In order to widen his surgical experience he travelled extensively on the Continent and with his friend Pringle in Canada and the United States. After meeting Felix Lejars in France, Dickie translated his *Chirurgie d'urgence* and his English version reached a third edition (1910-23). During the first world war Dickie served as a surgeon in the RAMC and was appointed OBE for his services. On returning to Middlesbrough he rebuilt and enlarged his nursing home. He was a founder member of the Provincial Surgical Club of Great Britain and became its president. He founded the Tees-side Clinical Club to bring the younger medical men together. He belonged to the British Medical Association for nearly sixty years and took a keen interest in its affairs. At the Annual Meeting of 1921 he was secretary of the Section of Urology, chairman of the Cleveland Division in 1922, and president of the North of England Branch 1926-27. When Dickie came to London he always visited the College, became friendly with Sir Arthur Keith, and presented specimens to the Hunterian Museum. After a serious operation in 1932 he resigned his position as surgeon to the North Riding Infirmary, and retired in 1937, but during the second world war he was group adviser for the EMS in the north-east area, and took a keen interest in the Home Guard. Dickie was a tall, striking figure who never lost his Scottish burr. He devised a radical operation for cancer of the fauces. He was a kind, gentle and generous man. He retained his love for the sea and enjoyed sailing on Loch Fyne. His home was at Ardenclutha, Marton, Middlesbrough, but eventually he went to live with his second son Dr David Oswald Dickie at Shipham, Norfolk, where he died on 20 March 1960 aged 87. Dickie was survived by his widow, formerly Jean Kennedy Mitchell, whom he married in 1902, two daughters, one in the medical profession, and two sons. Mrs Dickie died on 15 April 1964 at Hexham, Northumberland. See below for an updated and expanded version of the published obituary uploaded 17 June 2025 William Stewart Dickie was an honorary consulting surgeon in Middlesbrough. Born in Glasgow on 10 December 1872, he was the son of William Barr Dickie, the works manager of Anderson’s Foundry, and Mary Dickie née Mason. Three years later, when iron ore was discovered in the Cleveland Hills near Middlesbrough, the family moved south to the town, where Dickie’s father set up a new foundry for Anderson’s. Ten years later the family returned to Glasgow, where Dickie’s father became the manager of Andrew and James Stewart’s iron foundry. At 13 Dickie joined the firm as an office boy. Despite having good prospects at his work, two years later, at the age of 15, and against his parents’ wishes, Dickie joined the merchant navy as an apprentice and joined the crew of a four-masted ship the *Madagascar*. During his apprenticeship he sailed three times round the Cape of Good Hope and once round Cape Horn. He passed his second and chief mates’ examinations, but before he could take his master’s certificate to become a captain, the regulations changed. As his wife Jean wrote in her memoir about his life: ‘A very stiff regulation about eye tests came into operation; no officer might wear glasses, and when tested, William’s eyes proved to be too shortsighted for him to pass as Captain.’ At 22 he had to find another profession and, despite having left formal education at 13, he decided to become a surgeon. With the help of a coach, he managed to pass an entrance exam in three months and became a student at St Mungo’s College and Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He got on well with the anatomy professor Robert Thomas Kent, who appointed him as an anatomy demonstrator with a salary of £25 a year. In the long vacations Dickie stayed at the Royal, working in laboratories and dissecting rooms or taking over a job to set a resident free, gaining a lot of experience. Before he was fully qualified, he was a houseman to the physician David McVail; the outbreak of the Boer War meant there was a shortage of junior doctors at the Royal and Dickie filled one of their posts. As a student he won the John Reid prize for an essay on ‘The structure of the miliary tubercule’: not only did he win the prize, but his essay was so good that he was given, exceptionally, the £50 prize money for two years instead of one. In November 1900 he passed the conjoint examination, winning a medal for the best student in every subject but midwifery. After qualifying, Dickie became a house surgeon to James Hogarth Pringle. He was subsequently offered an assistantship with Finlay Munro in Middlesbrough, an old friend of his father’s. Jean Dickie described the working conditions he faced in Middlesbrough: ‘An ordinary push-bike or walking was his only means of transport…there were no cars…nearly all midwifery work was done by the doctors, and…there was more sickness – Middlesbrough pneumonia was so notorious, it was recorded as a specially virulent variety in the medical journals. The lack of hygiene meant many cases of infantile diarrhoea, insulin had not been discovered, and surgery and anaesthetics were both elementary.’ Dickie set his sights on becoming a surgeon, so went to London with the aim of taking his FRCS. After three months of coaching, he succeeded in passing the fellowship. Back in Middlesbrough, he was appointed as a surgeon to two wards – one male and one female – at the North Riding Infirmary. In 1904 he established a small nursing home in Middlesbrough, next door to his family’s home. Four years later he bought a large house in Southfield Road and established a purpose-built nursing home attached to the building, which was opened in 1909. Dickie found time to visit other surgeons and nursing homes on the continent and in North America. In 1903 he went to France, where he met Théodore-Marin Tuffier, a pioneer of pulmonary and cardiovascular surgery and spinal anaesthesia, and Félix Lejars, professor of clinical surgery in Paris. Lejars was keen that his book *Traité de chirurgie d'urgence* (Paris, Masson and Co, 1899), which had been published in German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, be translated into English. Dickie took on this task, found a publisher, John Wright and Son of Bristol, and translated the book himself, which sold well. In 1904 Dickie spent six weeks in Berlin, where he visited many hospitals, particularly urological clinics. And in 1910 he went with his mentor, James Hogarth Pringle, to North America to visit fellow surgeons. They first went to Canada, to Quebec and Montreal, and then to Cleveland, Ohio, to see George Washington Crile, and Chicago, where they met John B Murphy, professor of surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, and Albert John Ochsner, chair of clinical surgery at the University of Illinois. They travelled on to Rochester, Minnesota, home of the world-famous Mayo Clinic, where they met William and Charles Mayo, and then Baltimore, to see Harvey Cushing. Back in the UK, Dickie published a paper in the *British Medical Journal* in 1910 (‘Dry iodine catgut’ *Br Med J.* 1910 Jan 15;1[2559]:134-5). He also devised a radical operation for cancer of the fauces. At the beginning of the First World War, aged 41, Dickie immediately tried to enlist in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) but was initially turned down. He attempted to join the Royal Naval Reserve, but once again faced the barrier of his poor sight. Eventually the RAMC, realising the scale of casualties, accepted his offer of service and he was sent as a surgeon to the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich. As Jean Dickie recounts: ‘Unfortunately, his heart was set on getting out to the Front, and to this end he applied to his friend Mr Herbert Samuel (now Lord Samuel) Liberal Candidate for Cleveland…In February, 1915, Mr Samuel got Grandpapa sent out to the base hospital at Treport.’ But he also found this posting unsatisfactory: ‘…the surgeons after operating, took little interest in their patients, so that it was with a great sense of relief to Grandpapa to find he had the opportunity when Lord Moynihan visited the hospital, to make a request to be sent nearer the Front’. Within a few weeks he was posted to No 10 Stationary Hospital at St Omer, where he became surgeon-in-chief with the rank of major. He also worked in a casualty clearing station, very close to the frontline, providing immediate care to the troops. Dickie was awarded an OBE for his services during the war. At the end of the war, he returned home, initially to Glasgow, only to face the 1918 influenza pandemic. Jean remembered: ‘Hospitals and Homes were packed, and nurses not to be had in private Homes. Hearses were a very common sight. I never forget the sight of a long row of hearses slowly passing down Sauchiehall Street.’ Early in 1919 Dickie returned to Middlesbrough to re-open his nursing home and take up his hospital duties. After several years of neglect, there was dry rot in the roof of the home; it was rebuilt and enlarged. During the Second World War the bombing of Middlesbrough made his nursing home unsafe for patients, which was taken over by the education authorities. Dickie leased Nunthorpe Hall on the outskirts of the town and transferred his patients there. At the age of 70, he was too old to join the Home Guard when it was established in 1940, but he helped introduce its members to pistol shooting, with a range set up in his garden. He had long been a surgeon to the North Riding Infirmary and to hospitals at Guisborough, Eston, Whitby and Northallerton, but during the war he also became an inspector of hospitals in Scarborough, Kirby Moorside, Stockton and Sedgefield. Jean explained in her memoir: ‘He was not expected to operate but was expected to see that everything was organized for the event of there being casualties, and he prepared to go to these hospitals if these occurred and his services were needed.’ Also, during the war, the Dickie family took in six evacuees from Gateshead. Dickie was a founder member and later president of the Provincial Surgical Club of Great Britain. He also started the Teesside Clinical Club for local doctors in the area. He was a member of the British Medical Association for nearly 60 years, chairman of the Cleveland division in 1922, and president of the North of England branch from 1926 to 1927. In his free time, Dickie enjoyed sailing and in 1930 bought a small yacht and spent many holidays sailing with his family in Scotland. He also started a Burns’ Club for fellow Scots in Middlesbrough. In 1902 Dickie married Jean Kenndey Mitchell, a nurse. They had four children: William Acworth, Alice Eleanora, Lucy Mason and David Oswald. Both Alice and David qualified as doctors in Glasgow, in 1932 and 1934 respectively. Alice, who became an obstetrician and gynaecologist, married Norman Townsley, a consultant general surgeon at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in 1940 and became the first female consultant at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. David was a general practitioner in Shipdham, Norfolk. In his retirement, Dickie and his wife moved to Shipdham to live with David. Dickie died on 20 March 1960 at the age of 87. He was survived by his wife and children.