Born on 18 March 1878 at Streatham Hill, London, the only son of John Taylor, wine merchant of Dean Street, Tooley Street, London Bridge and Alice Miller Gordon daughter of William Gordon, stockbroker of Union Street, Aberdeen; he and his sister were taken by their mother to Aberdeen when their fath

Born in Eastern Bengal, 23 June 1878, the sixth child and second son of Frederick William Joseph Rees, of the Bengal civil service, and Alice Hawthorn Heathcote, his wife. He was educated at Haileybury and the Middlesex Hospital, where he won a prize in anatomy and in 1899 a second-year exhibition,