Born in 1891, his medical education took place at St Thomas's Hospital. After qualification he obtained an appointment as clinical assistant in the skin department and then as casualty officer with a view to continuing as house surgeon. On the outbreak of war in 1914, however, he immediately joined the RAMC and served throughout the war being twice mentioned in dispatches and being demobilised with the rank of Major. After this he was resident physician at York Road Lying-In Hospital and a clinical assistant at St Peter's Hospital for Stone. Having been admitted to the Fellowship in 1922, he joined a firm of general practitioners at Crewkerne as surgical partner with an appointment as surgeon to Crewkerne Hospital, but in 1927 he moved to Southsea as a practitioner, and in 1928 acted as surgical registrar at the Royal Portsmouth Hospital. In 1929 he was appointed honorary assistant surgeon and abandoned general practice, becoming a consultant, but acting as a referee under the Workmen's Compensation Act. His interest became more particularly concentrated in the field of urology, and he established a department of urology at the Royal Portsmouth Hospital and also at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital. In 1946 he was appointed consulting surgeon to the Ministry of Pensions Hospital at Cosham and Havant War Memorial, and in 1949 visiting surgeon to St Mary's Hospital which had become one of the Portsmouth group of hospitals. At one time he was secretary of the Southern Branch of the British Medical Association. He retired in 1954 and moved from Southsea to Chichester. He died on 6 September 1957 at St Richard's Hospital, Chichester survived by his widow, Connie, his son G N Lumb FRCS 1956, and his daughter Mary Saunders.