Apprenticed first at Wragby, Lincolnshire, to Dr William Walls, he entered in 1819 the united St Thomas's and Guy's Hospital, where he attended lectures by Astley Cooper and Henry Cline, junr, following at the same time demonstrations and dissections by Edward Grainger in his rooms in St Saviour's C

Born on April 5th, 1827, at Upton House, Stoke Newington, then a pleasant suburb of London, the fourth child and second son of Joseph Jackson Lister and Isabella Harris. J Jackson Lister was a port-wine shipper in partnership with Thomas Barton Beck, of Tokenhouse Yard, the grandfather of Marcus Bec