Born at Weymouth on 4 March 1878, eldest of the three sons of Walter Benjamin Cole, chemist, and his wife Mary Parmiter, of Dorchester. He was educated at Weymouth College, and as a dental student at Guy's Hospital. After qualifying as a dentist in 1899 he decided to become a surgeon. He took the Conjoint examination in 1904, served as house surgeon at Guy's, and then went to Birmingham as demonstrator of anatomy in the medical school. He took the Fellowship in 1906, served as sub-warden of Queen's College, Birmingham, took the additional qualification of MB ChB Birmingham in 1909, and came back to London to teach anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital in 1910. He was appointed surgical registrar at the Cancer Hospital and assistant surgeon at Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End in 1911, and assistant surgeon at the Seamen's (Dreadnought) Hospital at Greenwich in 1912. With these three hospitals he maintained his connexion to the end of his life, becoming assistant surgeon to the Cancer Hospital 1920, surgeon 1922, and con¬sulting surgeon 1946; surgeon to the Dreadnought 1919, consulting surgeon 1947, and a vice-president of the hospital's corporation July 1948; senior surgeon to Queen Mary's 1932 and consulting surgeon 1938. He was also consulting surgeon to Bethnal Green Hospital from 1926, and surgeon to Tilbury Hospital from 1930. During the war of 1914-18 he was surgeon to King George Hospital, Waterloo Road, and to the Brook War Hospital. Here his dental training was brought to good use in the reparative surgery of war injuries of the face and jaws. During the second world war he again turned his hand to similar work as a surgeon under the Ministry of Health's emergency medical service. He was a leading member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons. At the Cancer Hospital Cole was the youngest member and the last to survive of a brilliant band of general surgeons, each of whom also had a particular special interest, Cole's being for reparative work - Charles Ryall, Ernest Miles, Jocelyn Swan, Cecil Rowntree, and Cecil Joll; all were Fellows of the College. Cole's heart was perhaps most deeply given to his work at the Seamen's Hospital, where he was also director of the venereal disease department. He went to sea to study the conditions of work of a ship's surgeon, and in 1919 succeeded C C Choyce, FRCS as dean of the London School of Clinical Medicine established at Greenwich in 1910 for the postgraduate training of ships' surgeons. He was remembered with gratitude both as surgeon and teacher by ships' surgeons and merchant seamen all over the world. Towards the end of his life he revised the Board of Trade's *Ship-captain's medical guide*, originally issued in 1868. He was created OBE in the New Year honours 1947, and later in the year was elected an honorary life member of the National Union of Seamen, a tribute which he valued very highly. Cole was a Hunterian professor at the College in 1918, and he served for many years on the executive council of the Institute of Hygiene, before and after its incorporation with the Royal Institute of Public Health. He perfected the filigree operation for inguinal hernia, devised by his predecessor at the Seamen's Hospital, Lawrie McGavin, FRCS. Cole married twice: (1) in 1909 Amy Gladys, younger daughter of T J Templeman, JP of Weymouth; (2) Marjorie Pearl Christine Greene, a MRCS, who survived him with the son and daughter of his first marriage. He had practised at 61 Wimpole Street, and died at 41 Lancaster Grove, NW3 on 19 October 1948, aged 70. A memorial service was held at the Royal Cancer Hospital on 30 October. Cole was an athletic man and a games-player, particularly good at lawn tennis. Forthright and unwavering in his opinions, his turbulent spirit was mitigated by just and tolerant judgement. Publications:- Intramural extension of carcinoma of the colon. *Brit med J* 1913, 1, 431. Un-united fractures of the mandible, their incidence, causation and treatment (Hunterian lectures RCS). *Brit J Surg* 1918-19, 6, 57. War injuries of the jaws and face, in Fletcher and Raven's *War wounds and injuries*. Arnold, 1940. Experience in reparative surgery of the upper limb. *Brit J Surg* 1940-41, 28, 585. The filigree operation for inguinal hernia. *Brit J Surg* 1941-42, 29, 168.