Born on 6 January 1880 at Eaton, near Congleton, Cheshire, the first child and eldest son of Henry James Cumberlidge, JP, wholesale provision merchant of Hyde, Cheshire, and Anna Maria Ford, his wife. He was educated at Eaton School and at the modern and grammar school, Macclesfield. On 16 January 1899, he was admitted a pensioner at Christ's College, Cambridge, and was elected on 17 June 1899, a scholar of the college. He graduated BA after being placed in the first class of the natural sciences tripos part 1 in 1901 and the second class in part 2 in 1902, and entered the medical school of St Bartholomew's Hospital with an open scholarship in October 1902. He served his year as a house surgeon at the hospital and then became resident clinical assistant at St Luke's Mental Hospital and clinical assistant at the Moorfields Eye Hospital. Settling in practice at Leicester, he was house surgeon to the Leicester Royal Infirmary 1908-10, assistant surgeon 1911, surgeon 1919, and senior surgeon from 1933. Having joined the RAMC(T) as a lieutenant in 1911, and been promoted captain on 4 December 1912, he was immediately called up when war began in 1914, and attached to the 2nd North-midland Field Ambulance which served at St Omer. He was later on the staff of 5th northern base hospital at Leicester. He died unmarried at Eastfield, Stanley Road, Leicester, on 26 March 1939, and was buried at Eaton Church, Congleton, Cheshire. Cumberlidge held a high position in the esteem of his professional colleagues in Leicester. As a surgeon he practised a rigorous asepsis in his operative work, and kept Paget's tradition, in which he had been brought up, of dependability and punctuality. He was a member of the Association of Surgeons, was chairman of the Leicester and Rutland division of the British Medical Association in 1925 and president of the midland branch in 1922-23. He held high office in freemasonry, was a past provincial grand registrar, and at the time of his death was grand senior warden of the province of Leicestershire and Rutland.