Third child and second son of William Blackstock, gentleman, and Kate Anthony, his wife, he was born at 3 Cole Street, Birkenhead on 13 January 1895. He was educated at the Liverpool Collegiate High School and at King's College Hospital, London, where he was house physician, children's house physici

Gerald Golden only revealed the year of his birth on his 90th birthday. He trained at the London Hospital, qualifying in 1923. Soon after he went to Brazil, mainly to work in a mission hospital and for his scientific work during a typhoid epidemic he was awarded MB by the University of Rio de Janeir