John Edmund Riding was a distinguished anaesthetist who became dean of the Faculty of Anaesthetists at the Royal College of Surgeons and a member of the RCS Council in 1976. He grew up in Ormskirk in Lancashire and attended King George V Grammar School in Southport. It was there that he probably acq

Douglas Donald Currie Howat was a consultant anaesthetist at St George’s Hospital, London. He was born on 10 January 1920, in Denholm in Roxburghshire on the Scottish borders. His grandfather ran a muslin factory in Glasgow, but his father, Reginald Douglas Howat, preferred the life of a country gen

Thomas Cecil Gray was the first professor of anaesthesia at Liverpool University and undoubtedly one of the great British pioneers of modern anaesthesia. He was born in Liverpool on 11 March 1913, the son of Thomas Gray, a local publican, and Ethelreda Unwin. A devout Roman Catholic, Cecil was educa

Born on 25 April 1905 he was educated at Brighton College and the Middlesex Hospital, qualifying with the Conjoint diploma in 1927. He was appointed anaesthetist at the Middlesex Hospital, and in 1938 took the diploma in anaesthetics. In the second world war he served in the RAMC in the Central M

Born on 28 March 1891, the son of Daniel Marston and Annie Bell, he was educated privately and entered Guy's Hospital in January 1909 as a dental student and the following year as a medical student also. Qualifying in 1915 he held a house appointment at Guy's and then entered the Royal Navy as a tem

Anaesthesia was introduced into surgery in 1846 and for the first 100 years little progress was made. It remained essentially a craft learned by experience rather than a science. Full-time anaesthetists were rare, anaesthetics being administered by general practitioners or any hospital doctors. The

In 1873 gained the Exhibition in Zoology at the University of London Preliminary Scientific Examination, and then entered St Thomas's Hospital, where his student career was most brilliant. He carried off prize after prize, and at the end of his fourth year was awarded the Treasurer's Gold Medal, and

Second son of Henry Willett, brewer, of Brighton, well known as a collector and antiquarian; cousin of Alfred Willett (qv). Educated at Wellington College, he matriculated in the University of Oxford from New College on Oct 15th, 1875, graduated BA with 1st class honours in the School of Natural Sci

Born 13 February 1860 in Hertford Street, Mayfair, the son of John Carter of Elmlawn, civil servant, who had been in the Navy, and Hannah Elizabeth Miller, who came from Lincolnshire. The marriage took place at St George's, Hanover Square, in 1859. John Carter died, and in March 1871 Mrs Carter marr

John Holford Cook began his career as an ophthalmologist, but later re-trained as an anaesthetist. Born on 16 May 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, he did not meet his father until he was three years old. He studied medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, London, and, following qualificati

Norman Winstone was a consultant surgeon at Selly Oak, Birmingham. He was born in Gidea Park, Essex, on 8 February 1924, the son of Herbert Charles Winstone, a property manager, and Kate née Robinson, a policeman's daughter. He was educated at Gidea Park College and Romford Royal Liberty School, bef

Born 22 February 1873, the fifth child and third son of the Rev Robert Vaughan Pryce, DD, and Elizabeth Tippetts his wife. His father was principal of New College, London University, the Congregational theological college, from 1889 to 1907, and died in 1917; his grandfather George Pryce, FSA, had b