Born at Rochdale on 29 January 1880 the eldest of the three sons of Thomas Talbot, confectioner, and Amelia Maden his wife; all three brothers became medical men; he was at school at Whalley, Lancashire, and won the junior and senior Platt exhibitions in physiology at Owens College, Manchester. He graduated through the Victoria University, winning medals in practical anatomy, pathology and morbid anatomy, gynaecology and medicine, and taking second-class honours in medicine and surgery at his final examination in 1904. He was awarded the Tom Jones surgical research scholarship, and served for two years as house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary and the District Infirmary, Ashton-under-Lyne. He then joined Thomas Clifford in general practice at Stalybridge, Cheshire, and in 1909 was appointed assistant surgeon to the Ashton-under-Lyne Infirmary, and became surgeon in 1915. In 1914 he converted his home Early Bank, Stalybridge into a military hospital, but in 1916 he went on active service as a Captain RAMC, and was surgical specialist at the 23rd British Stationary Hospital, Baghdad; he was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he returned to Stalybridge, and acted as a referee for the Ministry of Pensions and a medical arbitrator in the Law Courts. He retired in 1938 to Coed y Castell, Deganwy, Carnarvonshire, where he died on 28 July 1953 aged 73. He had married on 12 June 1912 Catherine Gartside, who survived him with a daughter. He was buried at Mottram, near Manchester. Mrs Talbot died at Deganwy on 13 April 1964. Publication: Successful treatment of fifteen cases of liver abscess by aspiration. *Brit med J* 1919, 2, 375.