James Hamilton Doggart, the third child and third son of Arthur Robert Doggart, a master draper, and of Mary (née Graham), was born at Bishop Auckland on 22 January 1900. After education at King James I Grammar School, Bishop Auckland, and Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Darlington, he served for a short while as a Surgeon Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in 1918. He entered King's College, Cambridge, as a senior open foundation scholar in 1919, before moving on to St Thomas's Hospital. After qualifying he was ophthalmic house surgeon at St Thomas's, then house surgeon and casualty officer at the Royal Northern Hospital. Doggart was extremely unlucky to reach the peak of his ophthalmic training in the late 1920s and early '30s, when the policy of Moorfields Hospital was rarely to accept a UK doctor as a house surgeon. Australia and New Zealand were the chief beneficiaries of this policy. As a result, early in his career, Doggart substituted pathology for surgery as his main interest, serving as pathologist at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital and, later, Lang Research Scholar at Moorfields Hospital from 1930 to 1933. Later he was appointed as assistant surgeon, then surgeon and lecturer in ophthalmology to St George's Hospital; ophthalmic surgeon to the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and lecturer in the Institute of Child Health; ophthalmic surgeon to Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital; assistant surgeon to the Central London Ophthalmic Hospital and eventually assistant surgeon, then surgeon, to Moorfields Eye Hospital as well as lecturer in the Institute of Ophthalmology. Jimmie, as he was widely known, was a bibliophile and classics scholar who enjoyed reading ancient Greek. He loved the ambience of a literate community and never felt at home in the operating theatre. Consequently he was happy to leave the "carpentry of ophthalmology", as he called it, to others, while he interested himself in the medical aspects of his specialty. He found his metier in coping with diseases of the eye in children; in slit lamp microscopy (at that time a new method of investigation); and in the esoteric problems of ophthalmic medicine, on which he published a number of books: *Diseases of children's eyes*, *Children's eye nursing*; *Ocular signs in slit-lamp microscopy* and *Ophthalmic medicine*. He also wrote numerous chapters in books of multiple authorship as well as many medical papers on ophthalmology. He wrote in lucid style, bordering on the poetic, and the substance of his message was polished and superbly presented. He was an examiner in ophthalmology for the Royal College of Physicians and examiner for the ophthalmic FRCS, and he also served as Faculty of Ophthalmology representative on Council of the Royal College of Surgeons. Doggart was a liveryman of the Society of Apothecaries, and an honorary member of the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and Peruvian Societies of Ophthalmology, and of the Oto-neuro-ophthalmological Society of the Argentine. He was a man of intense likes and dislikes, his world being peopled by faultless gods or demons without virtue which, at times, could be a greater embarrassment to himself than to his associates. His usual stance was that of a well groomed member of the establishment, precise to the verge of primness, but he would occasionally make a comical remark which reduced his listeners to convulsive laughter. He was often at the centre of lively conversation at the Garrick Club where he was a regular and much appreciated member. He was certainly held in high regard by his students who found him a colourful and inspiring teacher. In his retirement he gained great satisfaction by recording many of the classics of English literature on electronic tapes for the blind. He was twice married: first to Doris Hilda Mennell in 1928, by whom he had a daughter who married Dr Walter W Yellowlees, of Aberfeldy; and, secondly, to Leonora Sharpley Gatti in 1938, by whom there was a son who became a barrister. When he died on 15 October 1989 he was survived by his second wife and by his son and daughter.