Born at Carmarthen on 29 May 1879, son of John Davies a ship's captain and his wife Mary Evans of Fishguard, he won a scholarship in natural science to University College, Cardiff, and took his medical training at St Mary's Hospital, London, where he won the Meadows prize in obstetrics and served as house surgeon and house physician. After being resident medical officer at Hampstead General Hospital and surgical registrar at the London Temperance Hospital, he settled in 1911 at Tredegar, Monmouthshire, as surgeon to the Iron & Coal Co, and was elected surgeon to the Hospital, a post he held till his retirement in 1949, when a ward was named after him. He was also consulting surgeon to the Tredegar Maternity Hospital and the Bedwelty Infirmary, medical superintendent of the Infectious Diseases Hospital and the Tredegar medical aid society, and medical officer of health for the Urban District of this densely populated industrial area. After retiring he continued to practise as a part-time surgeon under the Welsh regional hospital board. He married in 1906 Mari Elizabeth, daughter of Z D Jones of Carmarthen. Davies died on 14 May 1957, a fortnight before his seventy-eighth birthday, survived by his wife and their only son, Dr Caryl St John Davies MRCS.