Born 14 June 1867 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the second son and third child of Henry Parker, manager of the Elswick lead works, Newcastle, and Mary Phillips, his wife. On 5 October 1908 he took the extra name of Dodds, and after that date was known as Dodds-Parker. He was educated privately until he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, matriculating there on 21 October 1886. He graduated with second-class honours in the Modern History school, and received his medical education at the Middlesex Hospital. During the Boer war he served with the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital, and was afterwards appointed demonstrator of human anatomy at Oxford, when Arthur Thomson, FRCS was the lecturer. He was appointed house physician to the Radcliffe Infirmary in 1897, and house surgeon in 1898. From 1901 to 1903 he acted as assistant surgeon, was surgeon from 1904 to 1927, and was then elected consulting surgeon. Dodds-Parker did much towards the rebirth of the Oxford School of Medicine, and worked hard for the good of the Radcliffe Infirmary, more especially in connexion with the out-patients' department. In the university he was Litchfield lecturer in surgery in the years 1906, 1910, 1914, 1920, and 1926, lecturer in applied anatomy in 1908, and Reader in applied anatomy in 1927. During the war he held the rank of lieutenant-colonel RAMC(T), his commission as major bearing the date 3 March 1909. He was in charge of the surgical division of the 3rd Southern Hospital, and assistant surgeon to the Southern Command. At the Royal College of Surgeons of England he served as a member of the Court of Examiners during the year 1925. He had rowed in the Magdalen College eight and in the university eight, and coached many Magdalen and Brasenose crews, both verbally from the towpath and by means of models to illustrate the fundamental principles of oarsmanship. He was also the medical adviser to the college and university crews. From 1927 onwards he was a member of the Oxford City Council, and was much interested in the various art collections of the town and university. He married Mary Wise on 5 April 1904; she died before him, leaving a son and daughter. He died on 22 September 1940 at 5 Canterbury Road, Oxford.