Born 29 March 1872 at Scarborough, third child and eldest son of the Rev John Augustus Leicester, a priest of the Church of England who held no regular living, and his wife Charlotte Eliza Holdich. He was educated at Dulwich College and University College, London, where he took honours in physiology

Victor Bonney was one of the great masters of gynaecological surgery. He looked on himself as a surgeon who had cultivated one specialty, and could not agree that gynaecologists should be considered a third estate in the medical profession. He was not only a brilliant technical operator but a man of