Born on 17 January 1853 in Westbourne Terrace Road, London, W, the eldest son of Lewis Frederick Edwards, solicitor, and Frances Elizabeth, daughter of John Swinford of Minster Abbey, Isle of Thanet, his wife. His father came from Framlingham, Suffolk, lived at Mitcham, and practised in London. Swinford Edwards was educated at Dulwich College from June 1866 to September 1869, and on leaving school was sent for a short time to learn German at Leipzig and Stuttgart. He entered the medical school of St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1871 and distinguished himself by his neatness in dissection, gaining the junior anatomical prize at the end of his first year and the senior prize in his second year. He was subsequently a house surgeon at the hospital, and assistant demonstrator of anatomy and teacher of operative surgery in the medical school. In 1880 he was elected assistant surgeon to the West London Hospital at Hammersmith, where he became in succession surgeon, consulting surgeon, and a member of the Board of Management. In 1881 he was appointed surgeon to the St Peter's Hospital for Stone, and in 1884 he became surgeon to St Mark's Hospital for Fistula and Diseases of the Rectum where he worked in conjunction with Sir Alfred Cooper, FRCS. He gradually abandoned general surgery and confined himself to the treatment of disease of the lower alimentary tract, which is now called proctology. He was amongst the first to treat piles by injection, instead of by the methods then in use of ligature, clamp and cautery, and excision. He served as president of the section of proctology at the Royal Society of Medicine, and was an honorary member of the French Association of Urology, the American Proctologic Society, and the Association internationale d'Urologie. He was also president of the West London Medico-chirurgical Society in the year 1902-3. Cheery, benevolent, and clubable he was always much interested in freemasonry, had passed the chair of the Cavendish Lodge, was a founding member of the Rahere Lodge of which he was the Worshipful Master in 1919, and was appointed Past Grand Deacon in the United Grand Lodge of England in 1926 and was Past Assistant Grand Sojourner in the same year. He married Constance Evelyn Jeannette Dudley Driver on 14 June 1890. She survived him with two daughters, the younger of whom served on the Board of Management of the West London Hospital and was a member of the Ladies Guild of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund. He died at 68 Grosvenor Street, Grosvenor Square, on 29 May 1939. Publications:- Examination of the bladder, and Clinical examination of the urethra, in Quain's *Dictionary of Medicine*, 3rd edition. London, 1902. Operations upon the rectum and anus. Burghard's *System of operative surgery*, 1909, 2, 633. *Diseases of the rectum, anus, and sigmoid colon*, by A. Cooper and F. S. Edwards. 3rd edition by Edwards. London, 1908.