Humphrey Arthure was born in Tibberton, Worcestershire, on 27 January 1906, the son of Harry Edgar Erskine Arthure, Vicar of Mickleton, Gloucestershire, and Maud Mary, née Donnison, whose father was first Notary Public of the City of London. He was educated at Hillstone Preparatory School, Malvern and Marlborough College, where he was a foundation scholar, from 1920 to 1923. After spending four unhappy years in accountancy, he took up medicine, qualifying at Charing Cross Hospital and gaining the Governors' Clinical Gold Medal. He held junior posts at Charing Cross under Norman Lake, Hubert Clagg and Arthur Gray. He specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology, and was appointed consultant to his own hospital and Queen Charlotte's in 1939, adding Mount Vernon Hospital in 1947. He joined the RAMC in 1942, serving chiefly in the 17th British Garrison Hospital in India, taking part in the critical battle of Kohima in the Burma campaign and attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Arthure had a distinguished career in his specialty at a practitioner, teacher and administrator. He was honorary Secretary of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 1947 to 1954, Chairman of the Examinations Committee 1962 to 1963, member of Council 1959 to 1964, and senior Vice President 1964 to 1967. He was a co-opted member of the Council of the RCS in 1960. A strong supporter of the Royal Society of Medicine, he acted as President of the Section of obstetrics and gynaecology in 1968, and in the same year became Chairman of the Central Midwives' Board. He became consultant advisor to the DHSS in 1965, and was co-author of *Confidential enquiries into maternal deaths from 1964 to 1969*. He delivered the Simpson Oration in 1972, entitled *Midwifery in Simpson's time and now*. For services to medicine he was honoured with the CBE in 1969. He was a popular teacher in his hospitals and became known to a wider audience by his writing in Ten Teachers and with the excision of a renal calculus weighing 13lbs 14oz, a world record which entered the Guinness Book of Records. He married in 1936 Phyllis Munro, always known as Dickie, and they had two children, Frances and Richard. In his earlier years he played tennis and squash, later taking up golf. In 1985 severe angina necessitated a triple bypass operation, but he still found the energy to set up a school for petit-point in Chiswick. Sadly, Dickie predeceased him in 1993, and he died on 29 January 1996, survived by his children, Richard in America and Frances in Cambridge.