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The East London Hospital For Children And Dispensary For Women was founded in a converted warehouse at Ratcliff Cross in 1868, and originally known as the Shadwell Hospital for Women and Children. It was established by Dr Nathaniel and Mrs Sarah Heckford as a result of their experiences in Wapping during the 1866 Cholera outbreak. In 1875 the Hospital moved to a new building in Shadwell, helped by Charles Dickens raising funds by publishing two articles about the Hospital. In 1930 it had 136 beds. Its name was changed in 1932 to the Princess Elizabeth of York Hospital for Children.
In 1942 an Act of Parliament was passed to amalgamate the Hospital with The Queen's Hospital for Children in Hackney to form The Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. The Hospital was administered as one, but functioned on two sites: Queen Elizabeth, Hackney Road and Queen Elizabeth, Shadwell. A third site at Banstead, Surrey, the Banstead Wood Country Hospital, was opened in 1948. By the early 1960s the number of beds at Shadwell had fallen to less than 50. The Hospital was closed on 30th April 1963 and the building subsequently demolished.

The Queen's Hospital for Children was founded in 1867, in Virginia Road, Bethnal Green as the North Eastern Hospital for Children. The Hospital moved to Hackney Road, Bethnal Green, shortly after its foundation, and was renamed Queen's Hospital for Children in 1907. The Hospital was amalgamated with the Princess Elizabeth of York Hospital, Shadwell, in 1942, and renamed the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. The Queen Elizabeth Group Hospital Management Committee was formed in 1948 to administer The Queen Elizabeth Hospital on its three sites on Hackney Road, Shadwell and Banstead.
On the closure of the Shadwell site in 1963 the Hospital amalgamated with the Hackney Group to form the Hackney and Queen Elizabeth Group. This arrangement lasted until 1968, when the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was detached from the Hackney Group and placed under the Board of Governors of the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. The Hospital's Convalescent Home was managed by a Committee which selected a site in Bognor in 1868. The foundation stone was laid in October 1897, and the Home closed in 1912.

East Ham Memorial Hospital was founded as a voluntary hospital in 1902 and was administered by a monthly Committee of Management. Originally designed by Silvanus Trevail, it was extended in 1914 and 1928 to provide 25 beds, and was rebuilt in 1929 to designs by Mennie and Smith to provide 100 beds. The Hospital became part of the NHS in 1948, and from 1963 was included in the Thames Group of Hospitals within the North East Metropolitan Hospital Board. In 1974 it became part of Newham Halth District and had at that time 142 beds. It closed as an acute hospital, being re-opened by Newham Health Authority to provide 87 acute psychiatric and psychogeriatric beds in 1990. East Ham Memorial Hospital became part of City and East London Family and Community Health Services in 1994 and Newham Community Health Care Trust in 1995.

St George in the East Hospital was erected in 1871 by the Board of Guardians, under the provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867. A Nurse Training School was established in 1893. In 1930, when it passed to the London County Council, it had 406 beds.With the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948 the Hospital was transferred to the Stepney Group Hospital Management Committee. The Hospital was closed in September 1956.

The Royal London Hospital and Associated Community Services formed one of the first NHS Trusts. In 1991 the Health Service split health services management between 'purchasers' and 'providers'. The RLH Trust was the provider for Tower Hamlets District Health Authority, (later East London and The City District Health Authority from 1993), which purchased services to be carried out in NHS organisations such as hospitals and mental health services. The Royal London Hospital along with St Clement's and Mile End Hospitals formed the Trust as well as other community health services. The Trust was replaced by the Royal Hospitals NHS Trust which incorporated St Bartholomew's Hospital and The London Chest Hospital from 1994.

This hospital originated from the West Ham Board of Guardians Smallpox Hospital, which was established in Western Road , Plaistow in 1871, the Poplar Board of Works Infectious Diseases Hospital, which opened in Samson Street in 1878 and the Smallpox Hospital established in Pragel Street by West Ham Local Board in 1884. The Pragel Street premises closed in 1894 when the Samson Street premises were purchased by West Ham Borough Council and in the following year the Council likewise purchased the Smallpox Hospital at Western Road. Through the closure of part of Western Road, a large island site was made available for the development of a new Infectious Diseases Hospital, which opened in 1901 with accommodation for 210 patients as Plaistow Fever Hospital.

The new Hospital was considered to be one of the most modern of its kind and originated the barrier method of nursing infectious cases. Training of probationer nurses had commenced in 1898. In 1906 the Hospital was recognised by several universities and the royal college for the training of medical students in infectious diseases and over the next 37 years over 3000 students received fever training at Plaistow. The Hospital was damaged by bombing during World War II and in 1947 the older Samson Street buildings were made available for Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford, as a medical in-patient department. The name of the Hospital was changed to Plaistow Hospital in 1948 in recognition of the fact that it was available for acute medical cases as well as infectious cases. In 1982 chest medicine beds were transferred to St. Andrew's Hospital by Newham Health Authority and from 1983 the hospital began to specialise in elderly long stay patients with such patients from Newham transferring from Langthorne Hospital, Leyton to Plaistow. A dementia assessment unit was opened in 1987and in 1990 Plaistow day Hospital was upgraded and extended to provide 40 places for elderly people. Management of the hospital transferred from East London & The City Health Authority to Newham Community Health Services NHS Trust in 1995. It closed in 2006 when the patients from the Frail Elders Services were transferred to the newly opened, purpose-built East Ham Care Centre, behind the East Ham Memorial Hospital in Shrewsbury Road. The patients had occupied just half the site of the Plaistow Hospital and it was felt it was no longer economically viable to keep the remaining staff on site.

During the First World War Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was established, with branches in many parts of the world, to make and distribute clothes and other items to Servicemen. At the conclusion of the War a considerable sum of money collected by the Guild was left unspent and Queen Mary decided to use these funds to endow a Maternity Home, for the benefit of wives and children of Servicemen. The Home opened in October 1919 in temporary premises at "Cedar Lawns", North End Road, Hampstead, a house provided by Lord Leverhulme. The foundation stone of the new building at Upper Heath, on a site again provided by Lord Leverhulme, was laid on 12th October 1921 and was designed to provide 16 beds. The new maternity home was occupied in July 1922. In August 1939 the Home was evacuated to Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire, but moved again to Freeland House, Oxfordshire, in the Autumn of 1941. The Home returned to Hampstead in the winter of 1945-1946.

On 1st April 1946 the management of Queen Mary's Maternity Home was taken over by the London Hospital. On 1st February 1972 it was transferred to the Royal Free Hospital. With the closure of New End Hospital, Hampstead, in 1986 and its subsequent sale, funds became available for the development of Queen Mary House as a Care of the Elderly Unit, known as Queen Mary House, which opened under the management of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in 1991.

Founded in 1868 as the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum, as a result of the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867 (30 and 31 Vic.c6), which gave authority to the Poor Law Board to order the combination of Unions and Parishes to provide asylums for the Sick Poor. Poplar and Stepney Unions formed one of six such Asylum Districts and administered the Asylum, built at Bromley-by-Bow along architectural lines favoured by Florence Nightingale, and opened in 1873. The Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum District, whose minutes (1868 - 1925) are held at London Metropolitan Archives (ref: PSSA), administered the Asylum until the District was abolished in 1925.

The Asylum was renamed St. Andrew's Hospital in 1921 and was administered by the Metropolitan Asylums board from 1925 until 1933, at which time responsibility transferred to the London County Council. St. Andrew's became an N.H.S. Hospital in 1948 and was administered by the No. 8 Group, Bow Hospital Management Committee, until 1963, when the Group merged with the West Ham Group to form the Thames Group of Hospitals. From 1974 to 1982 the Hospital formed part of Newham Health District (though positioned in Tower Hamlets) under the City and East London Area Health Authority (Teaching) and since 1982 it was been administered by the Newham Health Authority.

The Hospital grew through 19th century extensions to over 650 beds. A School of Nursing was established in 1875 and nurses followed a three-year course for a certificate of training and sick cookery. By 1930 an optional maternity training course had been established and the nursing staff had expanded to over 200. The headquarters of Newham District School of Nursing transferred to St. Andrew's following the closure of Newham Maternity Hospital, Forest Gate, c.1985, and the School merged with in 1991 with the Princess Alexandra College of Nursing and Midwifery.

In 1990 the Hospital had 283 beds, but a systematic reduction of services had begun. Eighty-five percent of the Hospital buildings were considered to be in poor condition and below acceptable standards for clinical use. The Out-Patients Department closed, as well as some wards. Patients were transferred to Newham General Hospital. The Devons Road entrance to the Hospital was closed. The Intensive Treatment Unit closed in 1995, as well as the Accident & Emergency Department (but a Receiving Room was retained so that GPs could refer patients with medical or surgical problems; this closed in 1999).

The remaining services concentrated on rehabilitation and geriatric care.

The Pathology Laboratories closed in 2001. It had been intended that the site would be vacated by 2004, but St Andrew's remained open for patients until it closed in 2006.

The Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease was opened on 12 March 1867. Founded by a group of women (two of whom were nurses at the nearby Great Ormond Street Hospital), it was initially based in 19 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London. Until 1870, it was known as the House of Relief for Children with Chronic Diseases of the Joints, and from 1870 to 1881 the Hospital for Hip Diseases in Children. Hip disease, or tuberculous arthritis, was a common disease at this time.

The demand for the hospital's beds was such that 18 Queen Square was purchased in 1872 to provide additional accommodation. 17 Queen Square was acquired in 1873 and properties in Queen Square Place were added over the following years. In 1881 the hospital was re-named after Princess Alexandra, and by 1897 the Alexandra Hospital had sixty-eight beds. However, the buildings in which the hospital was accommodated were dilapidated and unsanitary and in 1898 a decision was taken to re-build. The hospital took temporary accommodation at 34 Guilford Street, Russell Square, London whilst the rebuilding took place. The new hospital buildings opened on 20 July 1899. The Alexandra Hospital also had convalescent homes at Helen Branch Hospital, Bournemouth, Hampshire (1874-1993); Wash Well Home, Painswick, Gloucestershire (1893-1914); and Clandon Branch Hospital, East Clandon, Surrey (1903-1936).

In 1920, the Alexandra Hospital moved from its central London location. It took up residence at the Kettlewell Home in Swanley, Kent, the site of St Bartholomew's Hospital's convalescent home. The Alexandra Hospital had maintained close ties with Bart's from its foundation in 1867, and many of its medical staff had served both institutions. These links were now strengthened and on 3 November 1922, the hospitals amalgamated. After the amalgamation the Committee of Management was renamed the Committee of the Alexandra Hospital and Kettlewell Home.

In 1940, the Alexandra Hospital moved for the final time, to Stockwood Park near Luton, Bedfordshire, a property on lease from Luton Borough Council. It was later proposed that a further move be made to Nyn Park in Hertfordshire, but these suggestions came to nothing and in 1958 the Ministry of Health closed the Alexandra Hospital.

The 1860s was a decade of epidemics in London and it was an outbreak of 'relapsing' fever, in which the patient fell victim to a fever, appeared to recover but relapsed after a week, which led to the foundation of the fever hospital that later became the Eastern Hospital. Since 1867 the Metropolitan Asylums Board had been responsible for the care and control of all fever cases within London. The site in Homerton had been designated as a fever hospital and a smallpox hospital, but it was not until the 'relapsing' fever epidemic that work began. The fever hospital was opened in December 1870, with six wards for typhus, two each for scarlet fever and enteric patients and two smaller wards for any special cases. This gave a total of 200 beds which were immediately occupied. Building work then continued on the adjacent smallpox hospital in an attempt to counteract a growing epidemic of that disease, from which nearly 8000 people died in London between 1870 and 1871.

The hospital opened in February 1871, and consisted of four blocks each containing eight wards with twelve beds. In the first three days sixty patients were admitted and by the middle of the month all the beds were filled. The overflow of patients had to be taken to the fever hospital next door, where the number of beds had been increased to 600. Convalescent patients had to be accommodated in the corridors or in tents in the grounds, while some were even sent to a hospital ship moored at Greenwich. By July, the epidemic had run its course and the number of patients rapidly dropped until, by October 1873, the smallpox hospital was almost empty. Although the first vaccination against smallpox had been made in England in 1721, and a reliable form of vaccine was introduced in 1796, it was not until 1853 that infant vaccination against the disease was made compulsory. Even this did not ensure that everyone was vaccinated and some doctors used the wrong serum. However, the 1870s epidemic clearly showed the value of vaccination, since no patients died who had been vaccinated. After this date the number of smallpox cases gradually declined until, by 1921, there were insufficient numbers to justify a separate hospital and the smallpox hospital was amalgamated with the Eastern Hospital. In the same year, the buildings of the East London Union Infirmary in Clifden Road were also incorporated into the Eastern Hospital.

In the 1920s, scarlet fever and diphtheria were the main diseases treated at the Eastern and the majority of patients were children. They were kept in isolation cubicles until the diagnosis was confirmed and then moved to a general ward. The patients wore rough flannel nightdresses and black boots, and there was a menu of weak cocoa with marmalade sandwiches for breakfast. In 1930, control of the Eastern passed to the London County Council.

During the Second World War St John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin was severely bombed and all its in-patient facilities were lost. Wards at the Eastern were allocated to patients from St John's and the association between the two hospitals continued until the 1980s.

When the National Health Service was established in 1948, the Eastern came under the control of the Ministry of Health and was one of the four hospitals administered as the Hackney Group, the others being Hackney, the German and the Mothers' hospitals. During the post-war years the Eastern played an important part in defeating two of the most feared diseases of that time - tuberculosis and poliomyelitis. In 1974, the Eastern became part of the newly-created City and Hackney Health District.

The Eastern Hospital was closed in 1982 and shortly afterwards most of the old buildings on the site were demolished. The new Homerton Hospital was built where the Eastern formerly stood. The first patients were admitted to the Homerton in the summer of 1986 and the official opening took place in 1987.

The first record of medical students working within St Bartholomew's Hospital occurs in 1662, when the Governors gave orders that "young gentlemen or doctors or practitioners" should seek permission if they wished to be in attendance when the Hospital's Physicians were prescribing. The Surgeons also had pupils, and the first students often bound themselves to their teachers by means of an apprenticeship agreement. They received most of their education by attending in the wards and following Surgeons at their work, a practice which later became known as "walking the wards" of the Hospital. Physicians at that time would usually have learned their craft by means of a university degree, but with less opportunity for practical work. In 1734 the Governors for the first time gave consent for any of the Surgeons or Assistant Surgeons "to read lectures in anatomy in the dissecting-room of the Hospital", although permission was withdrawn in 1735. Hospital staff offered lectures to pupils privately before this time, often in their own homes, and continued to do so until the 1780s. In 1767 the Physicians and Surgeons again approached the Governors, who agreed to allow the reading of lectures in a room adjoining the operating theatre in the newly-built East Wing.

In 1791 the Governors agreed to the request of the surgeon John Abernethy for a purpose-built lecture theatre to be constructed within the Hospital. A theatre was built between Long Row and what was then Windmill Court, behind the West Wing, to the design of George Dance. It was variously known as the "Surgeons' Theatre", the "Medical Theatre" and the "Anatomical Theatre", and lectures were given there by Abernethy (on anatomy, physiology and surgery), John Latham (on medicine), Richard Powell (on chemistry) and others. The theatre was rebuilt, on the same site but with an enlarged capacity, in 1822. The efforts of Abernethy also persuaded the Governors to pass a resolution giving formal support to the provision of medical education within the Hospital. This recognition by the Governors and the rebuilding of the lecture theatre are generally regarded as marking the foundation of the Medical School in 1822. Further accommodation in Long Row was acquired by the School in the course of the nineteenth century. A theatre for chemical lectures was built at the southern end of Long Row, and in the 1830s a new museum and library were constructed, with a further theatre for lectures on materia medica and botany.

In Abernethy's time, and for some years afterwards, a student decided his own curriculum, attending lectures as he wished, besides walking the wards. If he preferred, he could choose to attend lectures at several different hospitals or private medical schools. At Bart's, as elsewhere, students paid no lecture fees to the Hospital, but could purchase admission tickets to as many individual courses as they wished to attend. Each lecturer sold tickets for his own courses. At the end of a course a certificate of attendance might be granted to those who had completed it. Certificates of "hospital practice" were also issued, to students who had attended regularly in the wards. After Abernethy's death in 1831 the School began to decline, as no member of the medical staff was prepared to take responsibility for administering it, or for offering guidance to the students in the development of their studies.

Until 1843 students had to arrange their own accommodation, but in that year the Governors founded a residential college to allow the students residence within the walls of the Hospital. The residential quarters occupied a row of houses on the west side of Duke Street (now called Little Britain). The first Warden of the College was James Paget, who had already distinguished himself by his discovery of the parasitic worm trichinella spiralis while still a student at the age of 21. As Warden, Paget soon found himself directing the studies not only of the residents, but also of those students who lived outside. Paget's dedication to this task quickly re-established the prestige of the School, and the Wardens became in effect the administrators of the School and the keepers of its accounts. In 1850 Paget was largely responsible for the welcome which Bart's extended to Elizabeth Blackwell, who had just become the first qualified female medical practitioner. From May 1850 until July 1851 she was the first, and only, female student in the Medical School at St Bartholomew's. After her departure, however, a more conservative outlook prevailed and for many years any suggestion that female students should be admitted to Bart's was met with strenuous resistance. Women students continued to be prohibited until 1947.

Until 1892 the regulations of the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons required four years' study for a professional qualification, of which only thirty months had to be spent at a hospital medical school. After 1892 five years' study became the norm. By 1900 the winter sessions at St Bartholomew's offered lectures, classes and demonstrations in the different branches of medicine, surgery, anatomy and physiology, biology, chemistry, pathology and bacteriology. The summer session provided tuition in forensic, ophthalmic and psychological medicine, materia medica and pharmacology, midwifery and public health. The fee for five years of study was 150 guineas, if paid in one sum on entrance, or 160 guineas if paid in four annual instalments. As early as 1839 the teaching at the Medical School had been recognised by the University of London in admitting candidates for medical degrees. In 1900 the School became one of the constituent colleges of the University, but it remained a voluntary association of teachers in the hospital with no legal status of its own until after the First World War. A new post of Dean was created in 1904. In 1919 Medical and Surgical Professorial Units were established, in anticipation of a formal alteration to the status of the School. The Units aimed to bridge the gap between training, practical medicine and surgery, and the academic world of scientific research. It was a condition of University recognition that the Units were provided with their own research laboratories. The School and the Hospital were formally separated in 1921, when the School was incorporated with a new title, the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital in the City of London.

In 1933-1934 the Medical College purchased the site of the former Merchant Taylors' School in Charterhouse Square. This acquisition enabled it to re-house the pre-clinical departments, which were previously in cramped quarters on the west side of Giltspur Street. In the Second World War, however, the college suffered badly. Most of the buildings on the Charterhouse Square site were damaged or destroyed, and on the Smithfield site the buildings in Long Row were also wrecked. At the outbreak of war pre-clinical students were evacuated to Queen's College, Cambridge, while clinical teaching was divided between St Bartholomew's and its two evacuation sites, Hill End Hospital at St Alban's and Friern Hospital, New Southgate. The pre-clinical school returned to London in 1946, but the rebuilding of the Charterhouse Square site was not completed until 1963. The Robin Brook Centre for Medical Education was opened in June 1980. In the 1960s the College acquired its first regular peacetime teaching facilities outside Bart's when seventy general medical beds were made available to it at St Leonard's Hospital. After the establishment of the City and Hackney Health District in 1974 it became possible for all students to receive part of their training at several other hospitals within the District.

Following the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Medical Education in 1968, a close association with the London Hospital Medical College was developed, and a number of joint academic departments were established. At the same time, a link with Queen Mary College (later Queen Mary and Westfield) was begun, with the aim that eventually students would take their two-year pre-clinical course at Queen Mary College before going on to study at St Bartholomew's or the Royal London. In 1989 the pre-clinical teaching of the London Hospital Medical College merged with that of St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School as the Central and East London Confederation (CELC). It was re-sited at the Basic Medical Sciences Building at Queen Mary & Westfield College, Mile End, and the first intake of students entered the new pre-clinical school in 1990. Following the recommendations of the Tomlinson Report (1992) and the governmental response to it (Making London Better, 1993), the medical colleges of the Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew's Hospital were united with Queen Mary & Westfield College in December 1995. The medical school is now known as Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and is part of Queen Mary, University of London.

Before the Reformation there appear to have been five chapels within St Bartholomew's Hospital, but only one survived the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. In the winter of 1546/7, when the Hospital was re-founded by royal charter, its precinct was established as the Anglican parish of St Bartholomew the Less and one of the medieval chapels became the parish church. The tower and part of the west wall of the church date from the fifteenth century and are the oldest structures which now survive within the Hospital precinct. The original parish boundary followed the line of the boundary of the Hospital in Henry VIII's day. However, since 1954, the parish boundary has extended to include land on which the Hospital has expanded to the south and east.

Bart's is now unique among English hospitals in being a parish in its own right. The parish has its own churchwardens and, since 1958, its own parochial church council, which functions independently of the Hospital authorities. The title of 'Anglican chaplain', found in practically every other hospital in England, does not exist at Bart's. The role is filled by the Vicar of St Bartholomew the Less, who is correctly known as the 'Vicar and Hospitaller'. In the sixteenth century, these were two separate offices: the Vicar of St Bartholomew the Less, who undertook pastoral care of the parishioners, and the Hospitaller to St Bartholomew's Hospital, who looked after the needs of the patients. However, in the time of William Orme, Vicar from 1670 to 1697, the two positions were combined and they have been held jointly by successive clergy down to the present day. In former times there were a number of tenanted houses in the Hospital precinct, but there are now no parishioners except resident Hospital staff, and the incumbent's main responsibility is for the spiritual welfare of the patients within the Hospital.

The medieval church remained largely intact until 1789-1791, when the roof and practically the whole of the interior were demolished and rebuilt to the design of George Dance junior, the Hospital Surveyor. Dance's structure, however, was rapidly attacked by dry rot, and the church was again rebuilt in 1823-1825. The architect of the second rebuilding was Thomas Hardwick and it is chiefly his work that is visible in the church today. Hardwick retained much of Dance's octagonal design for the interior of the church, but reconstructed it using more durable materials, and pulled down all that remained of the medieval building apart from the tower and the west end. Some of the monuments from the old building were preserved and reinstated, including memorials to Robert Balthrope, Queen Elizabeth I's sergeant surgeon (died 1591), and to Anne, wife of Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, whose London house stood within the Hospital precinct in the early seventeenth century. A curious feature of the church is the height of the floor, most of which is some seventy-five centimetres above ground level. The reason for this appears to be unknown. Two of the three bells in the tower are medieval, and are very probably as old as the tower itself. The stained glass windows depicting the Virgin and Child with St Luke, St Bartholomew and Rahere, and also the war memorial windows, were designed by Hugh Easton and dedicated in 1951. They replaced Victorian glass destroyed in the Second World War.

In earlier centuries, attendance at church was compulsory for the nursing staff of the Hospital. Patients were also expected to attend every Sunday, unless they were too weak to do so. Regular Sunday and weekday services are held throughout the year, and the church is frequently used by members of staff for weddings, for the baptisms of their children, and for memorial services. The Vicar and Hospitaller works in close co-operation with the chaplains of other denominations and advises and counsels staff and patients, their relatives and other visitors.

Alfred William Alcock was born in Bombay on June 23 1859, the son of Captain John Alcock. Alcock's school years at Westminster were cut short by his father's financial difficulties, he was sent to India at the age of 17, to relatives in the coffee trade. For five years he tried out a number of jobs including schooolmastering; during this time he became interested in science, helped by Michael Foster's physiology textbook. In 1881 a brother-in-law, an officer in the Indian Civil Service, offered to help him to a medical education, which he completed at Aberdeen in three and a half years graduating MB, CM in 1885. Adding a course in tropical medicine at Netley to his qualifications, Alcock then spent another 20 years in India, in the Indian Marine Survey, as Surgeon-Naturalist, with the Indian Museum in Calcutta, and keeping in touch with medicine at the Medical College Hospital.

On his return to London, Patrick Manson recruited him, in 1906, to head a new medical entomology department, to join Leiper's helminthology and Wenyon's protozoology at the School of Tropical Medicine at the Albert Dock. He was the author of the first comprehensive textbook of Entomology for Medical Officers in 1911; in 1921 he became the first Professor of Medical Zoology in the University of London. His influence on the development of the London School was much greater than that of a mere teacher of medical entomology. He became an active architect; he embellished the school museum; he collected and arranged a large collection of insects of medical importance. He was largely concerned with the foundation of the Tropical Diseases Library based to a great extent on the books which Manson had collected. He was a frequent contributor to the short-lived Journal of the London School of Tropical Medicine which flourished for a time under his guidance but which was discontinued in 1913. Alcock died in 1933.

Publications include Report on the natural history results of the Pamir boundary commission (Calcutta, 1898) and Entomology for medical officers (London, 1911).

William Budd was born on 14 September 1811 in North Tawton, Devon; studied medicine in London, Edinburgh and Paris, 1828-1837 and gained an MD at Edinburgh, 1838. He practised at North Tawton, Devonshire, 1839 and Bristol 1842-1873; made important researches into the conditions of zymotic diseases and published numerous medical papers. Budd died in Somerset in 1880.

Patrick Alfred Buxton, born London, 1892, educated at home until the age of ten and was influenced by his father's family tradition (an old Quaker custom) of spare time nature study, less so by his mother's family's insistence on classical languages - she was a Jex-Blake, sister of the Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, and of the Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

At Trinity College, Cambridge, Walter Fletcher encouraged Buxton's studies in the Natural Sciences Tripos. During the Great War he qualified in medicine at St George's, and then spent his time in the Royal Army Medical Corps collecting insects in Mesopotamia and Persia. During the 1920s he gradually equipped himself for his future role as an eminent medical entomologist, working in Cambridge, London and abroad. From 1923-1925 he led an expedition to Samoa, New Hebrides and the Western Pacific Islands.

In 1925 Buxton succeeded Col A Alcock as Director of the Department of Entomology in the new London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and became the Professor of Entomology in London University in 1933. With V B Wigglesworth he built up the study and teaching of insect physiology and medical entomology in the School. His studies of lice (The louse, 1939,1947) involved students, friends and family members as incubators and have become legendary. According to Wigglesworth his crowning achievement was The natural history of tsetse-flies, 1954.

Buxton did invaluable work on insecticides leading to the control of typhus in the war in Italy and elsewhere. Buxton wrote papers on many other zoological subjects and has several species of birds to his credit. He was elected a member of the Medical Research Council, President of the Royal Entomological Society and of the Linnean Society. In addition, he was a member of many other learned bodies. At the time of his death in 1955, he had had the longest service of any member of the active staff of the School.

Dr James T Duncan was born in Ireland in 1884; educated at schools in Dublin and Watford and attended Dublin Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Post qualification, Duncan spent a year visiting Medical Colleges in the United States and Canada and was appointed lecturer in anatomy at the Edward VII Medical School, Malaya, 1914; later becoming Acting Principal of the Edward VII Medical School, 1916. He returned to England and took a course at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the Albert Dock Hospital, 1919, later being appointed as assistant to Dr Newham.

Duncan was attached to the Bacteriological Department at LSHTM from 1929, studying the Salmonella and Brucella groups, having already demonstrated skill in this field, in 1922, by separating Brucella abortus from man, the first published record of this. Duncan was moved to Winchester with the Emergency Medical services, 1939, and became Chairman of the Medical Research Council Committee on Mycology, initiating a movement for the establishment of a centre for Medical Mycology in London, which was later established at LSHTM. Duncan was appointed as Reader in Mycology to the University of London, 1945 and formed active centres of mycology in Leeds, Exeter, Glasgow and Birmingham Universities. Duncan retired in 1949.

Publications include An Annotated Bibliography of Medical Mycology, 1943(-1950) edited by Duncan and others (Kew, 1944-1951) and Review of Medical and Veterinary Mycology edited by Duncan and others (Kew, 1951-).

Percy Cyril Claude Garnham was born in London, 15 January 1901; graduated from St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1923; Diploma in Public Health, 1924; moved to Kenya to take up a position with the Colonial Medical Service, 1925. Here he spent a number of years investigating and controlling outbreaks of epidemics such as yellow fever and sleeping sickness. His interests whilst in Kenya ranged from the viral aetiologies of Rift Valley Fever and Nairobi Sheep Disease, studied in cooperation with the service's Veterinary Department, and through bird malaria to monkey and human malaria.

When the Division of Insect Borne Diseases was set up in Nairobi, Garnham became its Malaria Research Officer and then Director. He submitted a thesis on malaria in Kisumu for the degree of MD which he gained in 1928, with the award of Gold Medal from the University of London. In 1947, Garnham returned to London where he became a Reader at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Much of his interest was in malaria parasites, but he also made major contributions on leishmaniasis, piroplasmosis, toxoplasmosis, haemogregarines and many other parasites. In January 1948 Garnham and Professor Henry Shortt discovered the pre-erythroctic stages of true malaria parasites. He was appointed chair of Protozoology in 1952, and became Head of the Department of Parasitology.

Garnham retired as Emeritus of the University of London in 1968 and was invited to be Research Fellow for Imperial College at Silwood Park in Ascot. He collected over 1000 type and voucher specimens of nearly 200 species of malaria parasites from 170 vertebrates or vectors. The collection was catalogued with Dr Tony Duggan and deposited in National History Museum. At the age of 71 Garnham launched an expedition to Borneo to rediscover and redescribe 'P. pitheci,' a malaria parasite of the orang-utan. He came across a new host 'P. silvaticum' in 1972. Between 1926 and 1989 Garnham published solely or jointly more than 400 papers, including 'Malaria Parasites and other Haemosporidia' in 1966. He retired in 1979 and wrote a book on the life of Edgar Allen Poe which was nearing completion on his death on Christmas Day 1994. During his lifetime Garner received Fellowship of the Royal Society, Corresponding Membership of five Foreign Scientific Academies, Honorary Membership of 16 Societies, 14 Medals and Prizes, Doctorates Honories Causa of 2 French Faculties of Medicine, an appointment as Pontifical Academician of the Vatican and the CMG award. Twenty-one taxa parasites and vectors were named after him.

Publications include: Malaria parasites and other haemosporidia (Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, 1966); Progress in parasitology Athlone Press, London, 1971) and Catalogue of the Garnham collection of malaria parasites and other haemosporidia by P C C Garnham and A J Duggan (Cambridge University Press [for] the Wellcome Trust, Cambridge, c1986).

Major Greenwood was born in 1880 and was the third generation and only surviving son in a family of East End General Practitioners. He was expected to follow suit, but was rescued for medical research by the physiologist Sir Leonard Hill, father of Bradford Hill. Trained in the laboratories of Hill; instructed in biometry and statistics by Karl Pearson, Greenwood developed Karl Pearson's rigorous mathematical logic in a way which made medical statistics acceptable to a previously hostile and uncomprehending medical profession.

Greenwood became a medical statistician to the Lister Institute, 1910, where he published numerous studies which added to his fame, among others, with his friend Arthur Bacot, on the epidemiology of plague in India. He was then called during World War One to the medical research subsection of the Ministry of Munitions and became immersed in industrial problems. After the end of war, working for the Medical Research Council, he was appointed first senior medical statistician to the new (1919) Ministry of Health with Sir George Newman. Having already collaborated with WWC Topley on Medical Research Council sponsored studies in experimental epidemiology, their collaboration continued when, in 1927, both men were appointed to new chairs in the new London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Greenwood was appointed Professor of Epidemiology and Vital Statistics, a post which he held until his retirement in 1945. When Brig. Parkinson was recalled to service in 1943, Greenwood stood in and carried out the onerous duties of the Dean of the School until his successor could be appointed.

He was the Milroy Lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians in 1922, received the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society in 1927 and was a Gold Medallist of the Royal Statistical Society. He died very suddenly in October 1949.

Leiper was born in 1881 in Kilmarnock; his father died from tuberculosis when Robert Leiper was 14 which affected him greatly turning him to medical science rather than clinical practice; educated at Warwick School and Mason University College, Birmingham , he proceeded to Glasgow where he held a Carnegie Research Scholarship; graduated MB, Ch.B (Glasgow), 1904, and was employed in studying the helminthic material (relating to the study of parasitic worms) brought back by the Scottish Antarctic Expedition. A year later Patrick Manson recruited him to direct the newly created Department of Helminthology in the new tropical school. In 1907 he proceeded to Cairo to study under Professor Looss, a famous helminthologist in the University of Cairo and took part in the Egyptian Government's helminthological survey in Uganda. There he shot elephants and described several new species of intestinal nematodes from this great pachyderm. In 1909 he served as helminthologist to the Grouse Diseases Enquiry Committee and identified the parasite, Trichostrongylus pergracilis, as the cause of the disease. Leiper became University Professor, 1920 and Courtauld Professor of Helminthology and Director of the Department of Parasitology, London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine.

He remained connected to the School until his death in 1969; in the early years at the School he travelled extensively, making essential contributions to the knowledge of a number of helminths and their life-cycles, he founded the Journal of Helminthology in 1923 and began planning the Institute of Agricultural Parasitology at Winches Farm near St Albans. Active long after normal retirement age Leiper was acknowledged by colleagues as the man who put helminthology on the map in the twentieth century.

See sub-fonds level descriptions for individual biographies.

Wrey entered the Navy in 1878. As a midshipman in the SUPERB, he was present at the bombardment of Alexandria, 1882, and was in the CARYSFORT in 1884 during the attack on Suakim. Still on the Mediterranean Station, he served in the TEMERAIRE, 1884 to 1885. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1888, spent eight years on the China Station and became a commander in 1900. In 1909 he was made Divisional Officer of the Coast Guard, Southern District, with the rank of captain. At the outbreak of war he was recalled to service as Principal Naval Transport Officer at Southampton and remained there until 1918.

Commander Waters began his collection of material on Chinese craft while serving on the China Station as a midshipman on HMS BERWICK 1930-1931 and as a lieutenant on HMS BEAGLE 1937-1938. He added notes and articles to it since.

When the regional gas and electricity companies were nationalised in 1949, the South Eastern Gas Board (SEGAS) emerged as a fusion of the South Metropolitan Gas Company and the Wandsworth and District Gas Company. Both these companies had transported coal from the North East Coast in their own ships to their own wharves in the Thames since the first decade of the twentieth century, and their combined fleets at the time of the merger totalled twelve ships of gross tonnages ranging between 1,500 and 2,700 tons. These vessels came to be known as 'flatirons' because, in order to negotiate the Thames bridges, they had to have either retractable or very low funnels and a 'low profile'. The change-over from coal to natural gas led to the phasing out of the SEGAS fleet in 1971.

Augustine Henry was born in Dundee on 2nd July 1857 to Bernard Henry and Mary MacNamee. His father was originally from Tyanee in county Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and had worked as a gold prospector in both California and Australia. The family moved to Cookstown, co Tyrone shortly after Augustine’s birth where his father owned a grocery shop and worked flax dealer. Henry spent some of his childhood with his grandparents in Tyanee.

Henry was educated at the Cookstown academy and in Queen’s college, Galway. He studied natural sciences and philosophy, graduating with a first-class degree and gold medal in 1877. While at Queen’s college, Galway, he met Evelyn Gleeson who became a lifelong friend and correspondent. He then moved to Queen’s College, Belfast to take a MA the following year. After this he worked for a year in a London hospital and in 1879 passed the Queen’s University examination in medicine. During this time, one of his professors suggested the possibility of a position with the Chinese Customs service. For this Henry needed a medical qualification and he gained this possible at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, taking special examinations to speed up the process. By 1881, he had his medical qualification and accepted a post as a medical officer, setting out for China in the summer of that year.

Henry arrived in China at Hong Kong and then was ordered to his first posting at Shanghai. He spent the winter at Shanghai learning about the ways of the customs services and in the spring of 1882 he was assigned to the port of Ichang in the Hubei province on the Yangtze river, more than 900 miles inland as assistant medical officer. It was at Ichang that Henry started collecting plants. The area immediately surrounding the town is plains while only a few miles were the San Xia, a hundred miles of gorges filled with vegetation. Henry began to collect at the weekends as a hobby and then more as part of his duties as customs officer. After four months of collecting and struggling to name the plants, he wrote to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew seeking their advice. After the initial letter brought instructions on plant collecting, he wrote again offering to send them his specimens if they would identify them for him. The offer was accepted and he sent his first collection of around 1000 specimens to Kew in November that year. Henry continued to send specimens to Kew throughout his time in China and corresponded regularly with the director of the time, Mr Thiselton-Dyer. In 1888, he arranged special leave from his post to go plant collecting on behalf of Kew.

During this leave, Henry made two long journeys, one to the mountains southwest of the Yangtze and the other to the mountains in the north in the Hubei district. The main objective of these expeditions was to study the vegetables used in Chinese medicine. In addition to this, Henry also found many plants that were not known to grow in China. The areas he travelled were largely unknown to botanists and in some areas he was the western man to travel there. Although these trips were on behalf of Kew, it is unlikely that Henry was paid for his specimens. In order to recoup some of the money spent on the trips, Henry prepared several other sets of specimens which he then sold to other herbaria. In addition to these trips, Henry also was the first to employ native people as collectors on his behalf when he was not able to leave Ichang. They collected the some of the specimens that Henry sent to Kew.

In 1889, after a failed bid by Thiselton-Dyer for Henry to go collecting again, Henry was transferred to the island of Huinan. During the four months that he spent in Huinan, Henry collected 750 specimens. Henry then contracted malaria, endemic to Huinan. He was removed Hong Kong and then, after eight years in China, he returned home.

The year he spent at home was divided between Ireland and London. In London, he spent a great deal of time at Kew, staying with the Thiselton-Dyers. He also attended meetings of the Linnean Society, having become a fellow in 1888. During this year he met and married Caroline Orridge, a friend of Evelyn Gleeson and an artist. In 1891, he returned to China with Caroline. It was a difficult journey as Caroline was suffering from tuberculosis and she was taken seriously ill on the journey. Henry was based at Shanghai and was not able to go plant collecting due to his work and Caroline’s health. The Henry’s then moved to Taiwan in hopes that it would better suit Caroline. Henry took up collecting again although he was disappointed with the results. He became very interested in the native people and their use of plants. His wife health continued to suffer and in 1894, she and Henry’s sister Mary set out for Denver, Colorado to improve her health. Henry was about to leave China to join them, having arranged to sell his herbarium to Harvard, when Caroline died in September 1894.

After her death, Henry returned to Europe for a year, becoming a member of the Middle Temple. In 1895 he returned to China and was once again based at Shanghai. In May 1896 he was posted to Mengzi in South Yunnan, once of the most remote posts in China. During his time at Mengzi, he studies the local people and he began plant collecting again. His first trip into the surrounding countryside was spoilt by the weather but there were many others. Here he found lilies, magnolias and many others. When he left Mengzi, he sent off 32 cases of botanical specimens. In 1898, Henry was transferred again, this time to Simao. He was now Acting Chief Commissioner of Customs. This meant that Henry had less time to go collecting and he relied more on one of his native collectors who had been with him for many years to do the actual collecting. Henry started to learn the language of the local people, the Lolos. In 1899, he became alarmed at the rate of deforestation in the province and wrote to Mr Thiselton-Dyer and Mr Sargent at Harvard about sending out a professional collector. In the end, neither sent a collector but one was sent by James Veitch and Sons, nursery owners. This collector was E. H. Wilson, better known as Chinese Wilson. Wilson went to see Henry when he arrived in China to learn about plant collecting in China. About the time he arrived, Henry was moved back to Mengzi again and they went their separate ways, Wilson taking Henry’s plant specimens to send back to Europe when he reached the coast.

The political situation in China, which had been unsettled for many years, now became increasing dangerous. Henry became worried by this and almost resigned in 1900. This was now the time of the Boxer rebellion and later that year he had to abandon his post at Mengzi and go to Hekou. There he remained for several months. At the end of December 1900, he left China, officially on leave but in reality having resigned. He returned to London via Sri Lanka where his sister Mary was then living. Much of the next year was spent at Kew working on the collections he had sent back from China. He was now a well known plant collector and it seems that it was at this time that he became particularly interested in forestry.

In 1902, when there was no longer any question of him returning to China, Henry began to study forestry at the premier forestry school in Europe, at Nancy in France. He struggled during his time at Nancy, disliking the teaching methods and finding the French language hard to master. He was also much older than his fellow pupils which may have caused him disquiet. After a time, Henry began to wish for a job back in Ireland but none was forthcoming. He left Nancy before the end of the course and he then co-authored The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland with H. J. Elwes. This huge work, eventually published in seven volumes, took several years to complete and Henry travelled all over the country to collect information. Once it was completed, he was without a set purpose and entered into the social whirl of London in the early twentieth century. In 1907 he became engaged to Alice Brunton who became his second wife on St Patrick’s day, 1908. Henry also became professor of forestry at the new Forestry school at Cambridge University. In 1913, Henry got the position that he had always wanted when he was appointed to the newly created chair of forestry at the College of Science in Dublin. He continued at the college until his death in 1930 after a short illness.

Isaac Henry Burkill was born on the 18th of May 1870 at Chapel Allerton, near Leeds. He did his school years at Repton where he started to collect plants and insects and to develop an interest for botany. He first decided to train as a doctor and following the advice of one of his Repton's masters sought admission to Caius College in Cambridge. Burkill was admitted to Cambridge in 1888, in 1891 he was awarded a scholarship and was appointed Assistant Curator of Cambridge's Herbarium. He developed his knowledge of European flora and, in 1894, was appointed a teacher. In 1894 also, Burkill joined the Linnean Society and made his first visit to RBG Kew to determine some specimens from the Western Pacific region he had found at Cambridge. On the 1st of January 1897, Burkill was appointed to RBG Kew as a Technical Assistant. Two years later he was transferred to the Director's office as a Principal Assistant. Burkill had already developped an interest for Pacific flora and tropical plants, that led to his nomination as Assistant to the Reporter of Economic Products in Calcutta. Burkill arrived in Calcutta at the beginning of 1901. There, he met Sir David Prain, Superintendant of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. He was growing many plants of the genus Dioscorea in order to study them. Burkill soon shared his interested and they started to work on them and classify them together. Burkill used his tours in India and nearby countries to collect more plants for his studies and the Botanic Garden. In 1907, Burkill's title was changed to Assistant Director to the Botanic Survey and in 1912 he was asked by the government of Strait Settlements to accept the direction of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. In Singapore, Burkill started his first card index listing all the economic products of the Malay peninsula. In May 1924, Burkill retired and left Singapore. He went back to RBG Kew to work as a researcher. He first published a guide to the Singapore Botanic Garden and, in 1935, a DICTIONNARY OF THE ECONOMIC PRODUCTS OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. After the dictionary was published, Burkill returned to former studies and published AN ACCOUNT OF THE GENUS DIOSCOREA IN THE EAST, in collaboration with Sir D Prain, in 1936 and 1938. A second card index was elaborated for that publication. He was also at that time Botanical Secretary to the Linnean Society from 1937 to 1944 and continued studies on Ranunculus and Tamus. In 1952 he was awarded the Linnean Gold Medal. He was in permanent contact with staff at RBG Kew where he would ask for some specimens to be grown or some reference to be given from the library. In 1947 he started to study African Dioscoreaceae which led to the publication of a new article in 1960 ORGANOGRAPH AND EVOLUTION OF DIOSCOREACEAE, THE FAMILY OF THE YAMS, J Linn Soc Lond Bot 56, p. 319-412. His last publication was entitled CHAPTERS ON THE HISTORY OF BOTANY IN INDIA, published between 1953 and 1963. In his old days his eyesight became weaker and weaker but he continued working almost to the end.
He had married his cousin Ethel Maud Morrison in 1910 and, in 1914, they had a son, Humphrey Morrison Burkill, who inherited his father's interest for botany.
He died on the 8th of March 1965, aged 94 years old.

Colin Graham Trapnell was born in 1907, he was educated at Sedbergh School and later read Classics at Trinity College, Oxford. However, his real interest lay in science as he had been a keen botanist since his school days. While at Oxford, he joined Max Nicholson in founding the Oxford University Exploration Club in 1927 and in organising its first expedition to Greenland in 1928. His Greenland work was published in 1928. Trapnell then applied for a post as Ecologist at the Colonial Office and in 1931 obtained his first posting as Government Ecologist to Rhodesia, now Zambia. His task was to reconnoitre and map soils, vegetation types as well as indigenous agriculture of the whole territory, a task that would take him 10 years. The task was generally carried out on foot, as there were in those days few tracks suitable for motor vehicles. Trapnell and his colleagues would depart for six months at a time, using native bearers carrying essentials such as medical supplies and food.

For many of the native tribes they encountered, this was to be their first sighting of white men. The surveys, the first of their kind to cover a whole African country, were published after the Second World War and have recently been republished (2004) as they are still the basic source of essential natural resource data for the country The Soils, Vegetation and Traditional Agriculture of Zambia is in two volumes with accompanying maps.

In 1948, Trapnell organised experiments across Zambia on behalf of the Colonial Office to assess land for possible groundnut production, and significantly the Overseas Food Corporation decided not to start a ground nut scheme in Northern Rhodesia. The schemes which failed in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) lacked the kind of survey undertaken by Trapnell in Rhodesia. His work in Rhodesia was considered by the Colonial Office to be the foundation for a wide range of projects, especially on African agriculture. In the 1950s, he was asked to train ecologists for work in Africa, ranging from large scale vegetation and soil surveys to investigations into Tsetse and desert locust infestation.

In 1960, with J E Griffiths, he completed a study on the rainfall altitude ratio in relation to the natural vegetation zones of south west Kenya. Meanwhile, the Kenya Department of Agriculture asked him to prepare an overall vegetation map covering 40,000 square miles of southwest Kenya. This major undertaking was not completed until several years after his retirement.

Upon his retirement, Trapnell joined a small group of people engaged in founding the Somerset Trust for Nature Conservation, now the Somerset Wildlife Trust. He organised land use surveys for conservation purposes of the Mendip Hills and the Somerset Peat Moors, and was responsible for the Trust’s acquisition of its first nature reserves at Catcott and West Ham. For 13 years he was Chairman of the Leigh Woods committee management for the National Trust and was also responsible for negotiating the lease of the woods to the Nature Conservancy Council to form the Avon Gorge National Nature Reserve. At the same time, from his home in Bristol, he was engaged in the completion of the interpretation of air photographs for the vegetation and climate maps of South West Kenya, the sheets of which were published successively by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys between 1966 and 1986.

In 1994, he started the Trapnell Fund for Environmental Field Research in Africa at Oxford University, to support research into African environment. The fund established a fellowship at the Environment Change Institute, and Trapnell was the first Fellow appointed in Sep 1991. In the last three years of his life, although aged over 90, he collaborated with Paul Smith at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to produce a three volume ecological survey of Zambia. He was appointed OBE in 1957. He died on 9 Feb 2004, aged 96.

Henry John Elwes was a noted traveller and naturalist. Born on 16 May 1846 to John Henry Elwes (d 1891) and Mary Elwes (d 1913), he was the eldest of eight children at Colesborne, Gloucestershire, which had been the Elwes family estate since its procurement by John Elwes, great grand father to Henry.

Elwes devoted himself to following his twin passions of travel and natural history. In 1871 he travelled in the Himalayas, including a trip to Tibet. His observations on this expedition led to his 1873 paper 'The geographical distribution of asiatic birds'. Throughout his life, he would continue to travel extensively in Asia, where many of his botanical collections were made. India and the Himalayas were the places he returned to most on his travels, although he visited and collected from a remarkably diverse range of areas. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1874.

Having married Margaret Susan in 1871, his naturalistic interest turned form ornithology to botany, or at least to the collection and propagation of plants from his travels. In 1880, he published his highly regarded Monograph of the genus lilium. Significantly, Elwes collaborated on this treatise with J G Baker, who handled the explicit scientific aspects of the work. Elwes himself had no in depth scientific training, and as a result he focused more on the practical aspects of specimen collection, which he could combine with his enthusiasm for travel. Several species, which he was first to collect and bring to flower, were named for him, one example being the snowdrop Galanthus elwesii.

In addition to this enthusiastic collection of botanical samples, Elwes was also a keen lepidopterist. He recorded fifteen new species of butterflies and moths, and collected a vast number of specimens for his own edification. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1897, he himself attributed his success to his aforementioned 1873 paper. The same year he was awarded the inaugural Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society.

In his later life, Elwes became renowned for his study of trees. He was regarded not only as a fine observer and collector of specimens but also as an especially proficient propagator of those he brought back to Britain. He took many photographs of trees, as well as making numerous observations. He was acclaimed enough in this field to be appointed President of the Royal Arboricultural Society in 1907. Between 1906 and 1913, Elwes produced The trees of Great Britain and Ireland this time in collaboration with Augustine Henry. This was possibly is most significant work at least in scope, running to seven volumes in length. One of his great frustrated ambitions was to found a world class arboretum at his Colesborne estate. Although he created splendid gardens there, his plans for planting trees were limited by the soil quality.

Henry John Elwes died on 26 Nov 1922 at Colesborne. He was survived by his wife and his son, Henry Cecil Elwes (born 1874). His daughter Susan Margaret Elwes (born either 1870 or 1871) had died the previous year in 1921.

Forsyth was born at Old Meldrum, Aberdeen in 1737 and died on the 25 July 1804 in his home in Kensington, London. During his career he worked as a head gardener at Syon House, Brentford from 1763 until 1771 when he became head gardener of the Chelsea Physic Garden; where he continued to work until 1784. The rest of his life was spent working as superintendent of the royal gardens of the Palaces of St James' and Kensington. Whilst working in the royal gardens, Forsyth also developed and promoted his own 'plaister', which was a paste that he claimed would bind together old wood and help new wood to grow.

Forsyth also wrote two volumes OBSERVATIONS ON DISEASES, DEFECTS AND INJURIES IN ALL KINDS OF FRUIT AND FOREST TREES (1791) and TREATISE ON CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT-TREES (1802). Later editions of his treatise were created following his death, with the later being the seventh edition published in 1824. He was a Fellow of both the Linnean Society and the Society of Antiquaries and was also involved with the creation of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Henry Nicholas Ridley was born in 1855. His first major interest was in genealogy and he was fascinated by his family's past. However, whilst at school at Haileybury in Hertfordshire his interests started to broaden and he became fascinated by nature, specifically birds and insects, he wrote his first published paper on the topic whilst at school. On leaving Haileybury Ridley read Natural Sciences at Exeter College, Oxford where he obtained a second class honours degree. Having completed Oxford, Ridley wished to become a tropical zoologist and he tried but failed to obtain a post (most notably at the British Museum). He then applied for a botany position at the British Museum and was successful, despite botany being a minor interest to him. At the Museum Ridley worked under Carruthers on Monocotyledons. Under his tutelage from 1883 onwards Ridley published widely on Monocotyledons, Orchidaceae and British plants and insects. His first (documented) foreign trip was to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, about which he published papers on; its geology; its botany; and its status as a convict island.

In 1888, having gained a wide knowledge of botany, Ridley was appointed as Director of Gardens and Forests for the Straits Settlements. His post was based in Singapore but also incorporated Malay. From this point onwards Ridley's life was a hive of activity for example, in 1906 he published thirty-eight papers. He published constantly on the Straits region; he was a good Director who completed all his tasks with zeal; travelled as much as possible sending back specimens to build an impressive herbarium in Singapore and contributing to the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew; and he brought back live samples to Singapore to be studied and cultivated. He became especially interested in economic botany, collecting data and writing about indigenous plants with a commercial value such as rattan. Yet, Ridley also still maintained his interested in zoological science; he had a large insect collection; he studied relations between plants and animals indeed he actively cared for animals living in the Botanical Gardens, Singapore. Despite these numerous achievements Ridley is best remembered for his involvement in the development of Malaysian rubber or Hevea brasiliensis.

Sir Joseph Hooker (Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 1865-1885) had encouraged the exchange of plants between colonies and he suggested to Ridley in 1888 that he stop at Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to study rubber plants. Ridley was so enthused by what he found that on arrival in Singapore he established a plantation of rubber trees and started experiments. He concentrated on making sure that the latex yield outweighed the cost of planting and maintaining the trees. Others were slow to realise the potential benefits but despite this Ridley continued to develop his plantation and so by the time others started plantations he was an expert. The first economic plantation was in Malacca in 1896 using seeds provided by Ridley. Others soon followed and the resultant boom was largely due to Ridley's seeds and advice. When he retired in 1912 the planters of Malaysia awarded him $800 in acknowledgement but despite spawning the industry Ridley received nothing else.

Another great interest of Ridley's was psychic phenomena; he founded the Singapore Philosophical Society and edited its journal. He also founded the Society for Psychical Research. He was known to be a kind man, who offered assistance to his employees' families.

Ridley achieved much but it is for rubber and as the man who man made others rich that he is mainly remembered in his obituaries. Professional bodies recognised his contribution to botany; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1907 and granted a C.M.G. by the Government of the Straits Settlements in 1911. In addition, the Botanical Magazine was dedicated to Ridley in 1906 in acknowledgement of the many live plants he sent to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Ridley died at age 101 in 1956, at his home in Kew village, London having lost his sight from an earlier illness and having been confined to the house for four years.

Born in London on 13 February 1743, the only son of a wealthy land-owning family, Joseph Banks received his earliest education at home under private tuition. At age nine he attended Harrow School and was then enrolled at Eton School which he attended from the age of 13 until 18. In 1760 he entered Christ Church at Oxford University as a gentlemen commoner. His passion for botany and dedication to Linnean precepts had developed to such an extent that, unable to study botany at Oxford, Banks employed a private tutor, Isaac Lyons, from Cambridge. As was usual for members of his social class, Banks did not take out a degree. He came down from Oxford in 1763 an independently wealthy man following the death of his father in 1761.

As an independent naturalist, Banks participated in a voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1767. Although he did not publish an account of this expedition, he allowed others full use of his collection. In the same year he was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquities. In 1778 he was elected President of the Royal Society, a position he held with varying degrees of support, until his death in 1820. He remains the longest serving President in the history of the Royal Society, founded almost 350 years ago.

He successfully lobbied the Royal Society to be included on what was to be James Cook's first great voyage of discovery, on board the ENDEAVOUR (1768-1771). This voyage marked the beginning of Banks' lifelong friendship and collaboration with the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, one of Linnaeus' most esteemed pupils, and the beginning of Banks' lifelong advocacy of British settlement in New South Wales. The ENDEAVOUR had sailed into Botany Bay in April 1770 and proceeded up the east coast and through Torres Strait, charting the east coast of Australia in the process.

Frustrated in his attempt at a second voyage to the South Seas, again with Cook, Banks set off in July 1772 for Iceland, his only other venture outside Europe. From this time, Banks was actively involved in almost every aspect of Pacific exploration and early Australian colonial life. He was interested and involved in Cook's later voyages and actively supported the proposal of Botany Bay as a site for British settlement. He proposed William Bligh to command two voyages for the transportation of breadfruit and other plants, including the ill-fated voyage on the Bounty which ended in mutiny in April 1789. Practically anyone who wanted to travel to New South Wales, in almost any capacity, consulted Sir Joseph Banks and he remained the one constant figure throughout the first 30 years of white settlement in Australia, through changes of ministers, government and policy.

King George III had appointed Banks as adviser to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew some time after his return from the Pacific. His informal role as governmental adviser on a range of issues was recognised in 1797 with his appointment to the Privy Council. He served as a member of the committees on trade and on coin. In his capacity as President of the Royal Society he was also involved in the activities of the Board of Longitude and the Greenwich Royal Observatory, the Board of Agriculture (founded in 1793) and the African Association (founded in 1788). He was also a Trustee of the British Museum.

In addition to the Banks family estates in Lincolnshire, Banks acquired his main London residence at 32 Soho Square in 1776. It was established as his London home and scientific base. His natural history collections were housed there and made freely available to bona fide scientists and researchers. Until his death, this house was a centre for the wider scientific community. He did not discriminate between British and foreign scientists. He was, in fact, influential in maintaining scientific relations with France, for example, during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

In 1819 he was appointed Chairman to two committees established by the House of Commons, one to enquire into prevention of banknote forgery, the other to consider systems of weights and measures.

Banks was created a baronet in 1781 and invested Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1795. In March 1779, he had married Dorothea Hugessen (1758-1828), daughter and heiress of William Western Hugessen. They had no children. Sir Joseph Banks died on 19 June 1820.

Kerr was born on 7 Feb 1877 at Kinlough, County Leitrim, Ireland. His father was Dr Elias William Kerr (1849-1920) of Cerne Abbas and South Lodge, Dorchester. He was educated at Dorchester Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin where he was awarded a 1st Class Honours BA Degree in Botany in 1897. In 1901 he obtained a medical degree and obtained his first medical post on board a sailing ship bound for Australia. In 1902, he was assigned to Siam (Thailand) as assistant to Dr Hugh Campbell Highet (1866-1929) and later became physician to the British Legation in Bangkok. In 1903 he was appointed Medical Officer of Health in Chiengmai; during his time in this province, he began collecting and drawing orchids. In August 1903 he married Daisy Muriel Judd, Dr Highet's sister in law whom he had met on his journey to Siam, together they had four daughters.

During the period 1904 to 1914 he was Principal Officer of Health to the Siamese Government. In 1908, whilst on leave in Europe, he came to Kew and visited Sir David Prain, the then Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, and Dr. Otto Stapf, Keeper of the Herbarium. They urged him to collect a wide variety of plants from Siam for Kew and gave him the necessary equipment. In the 1910s, the flora of Siam had never been recorded, Sian being a practically unexplored country, never having been part of the British Empire. On his return to Siam, after his visit to Kew, he combined his tasks of medical officer, which took him to various parts of the country, with his botanical pursuits.

From 1915 to 1918 he served as a temporary captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, being based at the Stationary Hospital in Marseilles, while his family lived in Hyères. He became unfit due to ill health and went to live with his family for a while in the South of France. On 13 March 1919 he arrived back in Bangkok via Hong Kong, having served as a surgeon on a troop ship. After this period, there was a decline in Kerr's medical duties, until he finally resigned and went into private practice, whilst negotiations for his appointment as Government Botanist were taking place.

On the 1 Sep 1920 Kerr was appointed Director of the Botanical Section of the Ministry of Commerce of Siam a post he held until 1932; in November 1920; he returned to his old residence in Chiengmai. Each year from 1920 until 1929 he went on botanical tours beginning in the north of Siam and working his way southwards, concentrating particularly on the collection of plants of economic importance. On 13 Oct 1921 his wife died of malaria. Later on in the same month, he and his brother decided to take his daughters back to England where they were taken care of by an aunt; he then returned to Chiengmai alone on 11 March 1922. Towards the end of 1922, he left Chiengmai for good and the Botanical Section moved to Bangkok. However, he continued his plant collecting activities, travelling by various means throughout the country, carrying with him a considerable amount of equipment. He recorded in his journals everything he observed such as vegetation, the merchants encountered and the goods they sold, the crops cultivated, the number of pigs in villages as well as local industries and mines.

The official reports of these 'Tours' were published in 'The Record' a quarterly issue by the Ministry of Commerce in Bangkok, which mainly recorded financial information. However, Kerr gave in these a sketchy report narrative of his tours (1920-1933) with maps, recording his observations on the way; he made 17 tours altogether. These have been reprinted in the Miscellaneous Reports Series held by the Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Kerr was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London on 13 Dec 1923; on 23 June 1932 he sailed from Penang returning to live in England. In Jan-April 1933 he undertook a trip to South Africa and Madeira. He also spent time at the Kew Herbarium, working on the Florae Siamensis Enumeraito with Professor William Grant Craig. During World War Two the Admiralty became interested in his knowledge of Siam. He began working for the Air Ministry who asked him for copies of maps which he had drawn during his expeditions in Siam. However, he became too weak to continue this work and died on 21 Jan 1942 at The Street House, Hayes, Bromley, Kent, England. His remains were cremated and his name was added to the tombstone of the family grave at Ceme Abbas, Dorset.

Alfred Yockney (1878-1963) aka A Y, was primarily associated with West End picture galleries and art publishers throughout his career. However, in July 1916, he joined Wellington House and moved to the British War Memorials Committee as Secretary in February 1918. When the BMC was dissolved he was transferred to the Imperial War Museum on 1 January 1919 'to carry the erstwhile Museum of Information art memorial scheme to its conclusion'; his work being the supervision of the official artists and the organisation of the collection of works of art. He was appointed to the Museum's Art Sub-committee on 31 December 1919. However, Yockney soon tired of the endless battles with the Services committees at the Museum, and after successfully organising the National War Art Exhibition at the Royal Academy in December 1920, he resigned. Following his stint at the Museum, he returned to the commercial world first to Colnaghi's and then to Dunthorne's of Vigo Street; the print and etching gallery. As well as curating, writing articles for art periodicals and editing 'Art Journal', Yockney was also one of the directors of the Art Exhibitions Bureau; a precursor to CEMA and the Arts Council.

Edward Burra was born in 1905 and was privately educated. He took to art in his teenage years after the beginning of the ill health which was to last the rest of his life, but never impeded him. He studied at Chelsea Polytechnic in 1921-1923, and at the Royal College of Art in 1923-1925. During this time he met the core group of friends whom he kept for the rest of his life, including William 'Billy' Chappell, Paul Nash, Barbara Key-Seymer, John Banting, Frederick Ashton, Beatrice Dawson, Gerald Corcoran and Conrad Aiken. After college he lived much of the rest of his life at his parent's house near Rye, Sussex. Burra travelled widely and as often as possible. He visited France, Spain, America and Mexico, and spent much of his time in low bars, nightclubs, dance-halls and cinemas from which he drew inspiration. His first solo show was at the Leicester Galleries in 1929. He exhibited with 'Art Now' and 'Unit One' at the Mayor Gallery in 1933 and 1934, and in the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936. Burra also produced illustrations and designed sets and costumes for six ballets, an opera and a musical comedy. From 1952 he exhibited at the Lefevre Gallery focusing on still-life and landscape subjects. In 1958 the Hayward Gallery held a retrospective of his work. Burra avoided artistic groups and institutions, only involving himself with 'Unit One' and refusing an Associate Royal Academician in 1963. He died in 1976.

Scottish sculptor, graphic artist and poet. Brought up in Scotland, he briefly attended Glasgow School of Art and first made his reputation as a writer, publishing short stories and plays in the 1950s. In 1961 he founded the Wild Hawthorn Press with Jessie McGuffie and within a few years had established himself internationally as Britain's foremost concrete poet. His publications also played an important role in the initial dissemination of his work as a visual artist. As a sculptor, he has worked collaboratively in a wide range of materials, having his designs executed as stone-carvings, as constructed objects and even in the form of neon lighting.

In 1966 Finlay and his wife, Sue, moved to the hillside farm of Stonypath, south-west of Edinburgh, and began to transform the surrounding acres into a unique garden, which he named Little Sparta. He revived the traditional notion of the poet's garden, arranging ponds, trees and vegetation to provide a responsive environment for sundials, inscriptions, columns and garden temples. As the proponent of a rigorous classicism and as the defender of Little Sparta against the intrusions of local bureaucracy, he insisted on the role of the artist as a moralist who comments sharply on cultural affairs. The esteem won by Finlay's artistic stance and style is attested by many important large-scale projects undertaken throughout the world. The ‘Sacred Grove', created between 1980 and 1982 at the heart of the Kröller-Müller Sculpture Park, Otterlo, is one of the most outstanding examples of Finlay's work outside Little Sparta.

Born 1913; Lt, Royal Scots Greys, 1939; service in Middle East and Italy, World War Two; in charge of Directorate for re-education and repatriation of German POWs, under Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department, 1946; Capt, A Sqn, Royal Scots Greys, Germany, 1948; service with Army, Navy and Air Force Intelligence Centre, Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire, 1950-1952; Military Attache, British Embassy, Rangoon, Burma, 1954-1957; retired from Army, 1960; service in Joint Intelligence Bureau, Ministry of Defence, 1964-1971; Director of Overseas Defence Relations, Ministry of Defence, 1971-1980; retired, 1980.

The British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee, the supreme Anglo-American military strategic and operational authority during World War Two. The committee advised the governments of Britain and the US on matters of strategy, and also implemented the strategic decisions taken by them. In its highest capacity, the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee controlled operational strategy in the Mediterranean and European theatres, and during the Battle of the Atlantic, and held jurisdiction over grand strategic policy in all other areas where operational strategy was controlled by the COS or the JCS. The Combined Chiefs of Staff committee issued directives to its supreme commanders by acting through the chiefs of staff of the country that provided the commander. The decision to form the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) came in Dec 1941 at the ARCADIA Conference in Washington, DC, where the British Joint Staff Mission headed by Gen (later FM) Sir John Greer Dill developed with American representatives a combined office, secretariat, and planning staff. Eventually, a number of sub-committees were constituted as the war progressed, the most important of which were the Combined Intelligence Committee and the Combined Planning Staff. With the emergence of the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee, it became necessary in the United States to form an American agency with comparable decision making structure to that of the British Chiefs of Staff (COS). This was formally inaugurated in Feb 1942 as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) committee, its first members being Gen George Catlett Marshall, US Army Chief of Staff , Adm Harold Raynsford Stark and Adm Ernest Joseph King, US Navy, and Lt Gen Henry H 'Hap' Arnold, US Army Air Forces.

Born 1909; Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force; 1 Lincoln Regiment, Dover, 1928; Gibraltar, 1930; non-commissioned officer, Royal Army Service Corps; served in Palestine, 1938-1939; Chief Clerk of the General Staff, HQ Western Desert, 1940-1941; Staff Officer, London 1941; school teacher; died 2005.

Roberts served as confidential clerk under Gen Sir Richard O'Connor, 1937-1941 during the periods when O'Connor was Commander of 7 Infantry Division and Military Governor in Palestine, 1938-1939; Commander of the Western Desert Force in Egypt, 1940 and General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, British Troops in Egypt, 1941, until O'Connor's capture on 6 Apr 1941.

Born 1914; read Engineering at Cambridge University; emergency commission as 2 Lieutenant, African Colonial Forces, 1941; Lieutenant, Royal Corps of Signals, Regular Army Reserve of Officers, 1952; transferred to Royal Engineers; retired as Lieutenant Colonel, 1956; worked as chemical engineer, petroleum industry; died 2003.

Born, Edinburgh, 1826; educated at Glasgow University; commissioned into 72 Foot, 1846; Lieutenant, 72 Foot Headquarters, Barbados, 1849; Nova Scotia, Canada, 1851; Captain, 1853; Crimea, Russia, May 1855; service with Highland brigade, Sevastopol (Sebastopol), Russia, Jun 1855; Major, 1856; Military Secretary to Lt Gen Sir Colin Campbell (later General Sir Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde), Commander in Chief, Indian Mutiny expedition, 1857; wounded, losing his left arm at second relief of Lucknow Garrison, India, 1857; Lieutenant Colonel, 1861; Assistant Adjutant General in office of Inspector General of Infantry, 1862-1864; Assistant Adjutant General, South Western District, 1864-1867; Colonel, 1867; succeeded father as Baronet, 1867; Assistant Adjutant General, Aldershot, 1870; Commander, British troops, second Anglo-Asante War, Ghana, 1873-1874; battle of Amoaful (Amoafo), capture of Bequah (Bekwai) and capture of Kumasi, Ghana, 1873-1874; Deputy Adjutant General, Ireland, 1874; Major General, 1877; Commandant, Staff College Camberley and Deputy Quartermaster General, Intelligence, 1882; Commander, British troops, Suez Canal, Egypt, 1882; Lieutenant General, 1882; Commander, British Force in Egypt, 1882-1883; Commander, Aldershot Division, 1883-1888; General, 1889; retired, 1893; died, London, 1907.

Born in 1861; educated at Haileybury College and Royal Military College, Sandhurst; commissioned into 6 Inniskilling Dragoons, 1882; served in Bechuanaland Expedition, 1884-1885, and in Zululand, 1888; Adjutant, Inniskilling Dragoons, 1889-1893; served in UK, 1890-1896; Staff College, Camberley, 1896-1897; Maj, 1897; Bde Maj, 3 Cavalry Bde, Ireland, 1898; served in South Africa, 1899-1902; commanded 5 Royal Irish Lancers, 1902-1905, and 4 Cavalry Brigade, Eastern Command, 1905-1910; Inspector of Cavalry, 1910-1914; served on Western Front, 1914-1917; Commander, Cavalry Div (later Cavalry Corps), BEF, 1914; Commander, 5 Army Corps, 1915; Commander, 3 Army, 1915-1917; Commander-in-Chief, Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Palestine and Egypt, 1917-1919; FM, 1919; High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, 1919-1925; died in 1936. Placed

Born in 1895; educated at Royal Naval College, Dartmouth; joined Royal Artillery, Aug 1914; served in World War One, 1914-1918; Capt, 1917; Brevet Maj, 1931; served in Northern Kurdistan, 1932; Maj, 1933; Brevet Lt Col, 1935; Col, 1939; commander of 43 Div, North Africa, 1941-1942; acting Lt Gen, 1942; commanded 5 Corps, North Africa and Italy, 1942-1944; Maj Gen and temporary Lt Gen, 1943; General Officer Commanding British Troops in Egypt, 1944-1948; Lt Gen, 1946; Col Commandant, Royal Artillery, 1947-1957; retired in 1948; Col Commandant, Royal Horse Artillery, 1948-1957; died in 1964.

Born in 1919; educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford; war correspondent in Spanish Civil War, 1938-1939; Attaché, HM Legation, Belgrade, and on special missions in Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania and Middle East, 1939-1940; Sgt, RAF, 1940-1941; commissioned and transferred to Army, 1941; served in Egypt, Palestine and the Adriatic, 1941-1942; liaison officer to Albanian resistance movement, 1944; served on staff of Lt Gen Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, special military representative with Gen Chiang Kai-shek, 1945; contested Preston in Conservative interest, Jul 1945; Conservative MP for Preston North, 1950-1966, and Brighton Pavilion, 1969-1992; delegate to Consultative Assembly of Council of Europe, 1950-1953 and 1956; member of Round Table Conference on Malta, 1955; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Financial Secretary, War Office, 1957-1958; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 1958-1960; Secretary of State for Air, 1960-1962; Minister of Aviation, 1962-1964; Minister of Public Building and Works, 1970; Minister for Housing and Construction, Department of the Environment, 1970-1972; Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 1972-1974; died 1997. Publications: Sons of the eagle (Macmillan and Co, London, 1948); vols 4, 5 and 6 of James Louis Garvin's The life of Joseph Chamberlain (Macmillan and Co, London, 1932-1969); Approach march: a venture in autobiography (Hutchinson, London, 1973); died 3 Sep 1996.

Born in Liverpool in 1911; ordained as a Roman Catholic priest, 1935; curate at St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, 1935-1940; served as Army Chaplain, 1940-1945; POW, 1943; appointed to Monks Kirby, Warwickshire, 1946-1959, Hethe, Oxfordshire, 1959-1961 and Haunton, Staffordshire, 1961-1983; died in 1983.

Born in 1897; 2nd Lt, 1918; served in France and Belgium, Aug-Oct 1918; entered Royal Army Ordnance Corps, 1923; Capt, 1929; Maj, 1935; Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services, 1938-1940; Lt Col, 1940; Deputy Director of Ordnance Services (Engineering), Malaya Command, 1941-1942; Col, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, 1943; Assistant Director of Mechanical Engineering in the War Office, 1946-1947; Brig, 1948; died in 1981.

Born in 1917; served in World War Two with RAF 177 Sqn; Wing Cdr, General Duties Branch, 1949.

Born in 1893; 2nd Lt, 1912; served in France and Belgium, 1914-1915, 1917; Lt, 1915; Capt, 1916; Deputy Assistant Adjutant General, India, 1919-1920; Captain Instructor in Gunnery (Artillery), School of Artillery, 1922-1926; Staff Officer, Royal Artillery, Northern Command, 1926-1928; Staff Captain, School of Artillery, 1928; commanded 11 Field Battery, Royal Artillery, India, 1933-1934; died 1979.

Born 1910; educated at Oundle and New College, Oxford; worked as a solicitor with his father's firm, Greaves, Atter and Beaumont, 1934-1939; joined Yorkshire Flying Club, 1935; Pilot Officer, Auxiliary Air Force, 1936; service with 609 (West Riding) (Bomber) Sqn, No 6 (Auxiliary) Group, Yeadon, Yorkshire, 1936-1938; Flying Officer, Auxiliary Air Force, 1937; conversion of 609 Sqn to fighter aircraft, Dec 1938; served in World War Two, 1939-1945; served at RAF Drem, Haddingtonshire, and RAF Kinloss, Elginshire, Scotland, 1939-1940; Flight Lt, 1940; RAF Northolt, Middlesex, and RAF Warmwell, Dorset, and RAF Middle Wallop, Hampshire, 1940; served over Dunkirk beaches, France, May-Jun 1940; provided RAF fighter escort for Prime Minister Rt Hon Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, on visits to Briare and Tours, France, Jun 1940; acting Commanding Officer 609 Sqn, Battle of Britain, 1940; Instructor, No 7 Operational Training Unit, Hawarden, Flintshire, 1940-1941; Sqn Ldr, 1941; Chief Instructor, Operational Training Unit, Turnhouse, Edinburgh, 1941; Sqn Ldr (Organisation), Headquarters, No 9 Group, Fighter Command, Preston, Lancashire, 1941-1942; Wg Cdr, 1942; commanded RAF Andreas, Isle of Man, 1942-1943; commanded RAF Woodvale, Lancashire, 1943; commanded RAF Zeals, Wiltshire, 1943; Gp Capt and Deputy Air Officer, Administration, No 84 Group, 2 Tactical Air Force, 1943-1945; served in North West Europe, 1944-1945; awarded OBE, 1945; demobilised, 1945; Clerk to the Governors of Charities, Wakefield, Yorkshire; Clerk to the Commissioners of Tax; Secretary of the Wakefield Chamber of Commerce; Deputy Coroner for Wakefield and Chairman of the Wakefield Hospital Management Group; Deputy Lieutenant, West Riding of Yorkshire, 1967; High Sheriff, West Yorkshire, 1979; died 1997.

Born in 1916; educated at Haileybury College and Peterhouse, Cambridge; joined the army, 1940; POW in Japanese hands, 1942-1945; Assistant Secretary of the University of Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies, 1946-1948; Chairman of the Educational Interchange Council, 1951-1979; founded first Bell School of Languages for the teaching of English to foreign students, 1955; died in 1989.

Born in Paris, France, 1925; educated at Lycée Henry IV and L'École Boulle, Paris; worked as a jewellery designer, Paris [1943]; called up for compulsory labour, Bergès sought to escape to Spain with the help of the Maquis, Jun 1944; severely wounded in the attempt by the Gestapo, near St Girons, France, 17 Jun 1944; treated for his wounds in local hospice, Jun-Jul 1944; left St Girons with Maquis from Toullouse, 13 Jul 1944; retired to Itxassou, near Biarritz, France [1996].

The documentary was produced by 3BM for Channel 4, Oregon Public Broadcasting, RTL and ITEL. 3BM is an independent television production company founded in October 1995 by Jeremy Bennett, Simon Berthon, Marion Milne and Malcolm Brinkworth. It has offices in London and Bath and specialises in production of documentaries in the historical, current affairs and popular science and human interest fields.
The Berlin Airlift was produced by Jeremy Bennett and directed by Marion Milne. Other members of the production team included Professor Avi Shlaim, Historical Consultant; Tamzin Fry, Production Manager; Rosalind Bentley, Film Research; Helen Seaman, Research; and David Spiers, Editor.

Born 1894; RN Cadet, Royal Naval College, Osborne, Isle of Wight, 1907-1909; RN Cadet, Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, Devon, 1909-1911; served on Training Cruiser HMS CUMBERLAND, 1911; Midshipman, 1911; HMS BRITANNIA, Home Fleet, 1911; HMS DRAKE, Flagship of V Adm Sir George Fowler King-Hall, Commander-in-Chief, Australia, 1911-1913; HMS DREADNOUGHT, Flagship of V Adm Sir Charles John Briggs, commanding 4 Battle Sqn, Home Fleet, 1913-1914; acting Sub Lt, 1914; First Lt, HMS BONETTA, Devonport, 1914; Sub Lt, 1914; HMS AURORA, Devonport, 1914; served in World War One, 1914-1916; Lt, 1915; First Lt, HMS NESTOR, 13 Destroyer Flotilla, Grand Fleet, Queensferry, Fife, Scotland, 1916; killed in action during the sinking of HMS NESTOR, 13 Destroyer Flotilla, Battle of Jutland, North Sea, 31 May 1916.