Born on 24 July 1877 in London, the elder son of John Payne of Sydenham and later of Sevenoaks and South Africa, he was educated at Eastbourne New College, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took second-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, part I, 1898, and rowed in the University VIII in 1899 and 1900; and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he served as house surgeon and house physician. He was a clinical assistant at the East London Hospital for Children and senior resident medical officer at the Royal Free Hospital. He then settled in practice at Torquay, and became surgeon to the Torbay Hospital and medical officer to the Post Office. During the first world war he was surgical specialist in command of No 1 War Hospital at Exeter. He had married in 1908 Sylvia May, daughter of the Rev E W More. During the nineteen-thirties he practised at Eastbourne, and was subsequently medical officer at Radley College. He settled finally at Pavey's Cottage, Langton Green, Kent, where he died suddenly on 8 February 1956 aged 78, and was buried at Speldhurst.