Born on July 3rd, 1797, the eldest son by his second wife of James South, a druggist in Southwark. Sir James South (1785-1867), President of the Royal Astronomical Society, who also qualified as a medical man, was his half-brother. His father made money by prescribing for immense numbers of children

The third son of John Mayo (1761-1818), MD Oxon, born in Queen Anne Street, London, on April 3rd, 1796. He entered the Middlesex Hospital on May 17th, 1814, and was there a pupil of Sir Charles Bell until 1815, becoming a House Surgeon in 1818, by which time he had taken his MD degree at Leyden. In

The only child of the Rev Philip de la Garde, sometime Rector of St Martin, Jersey, and of Sarah, daughter of Jonathan Chilwell, of Westerham, and Hadlow in Kent. He was born at Chelsea, and there his father died when he was a year old. He was educated at the Exeter Grammar School when John Lemprier