George Fielding Blandford

George Fielding Blandford (Avatar)

1829-1911

Vol IV

Pg 168

George Fielding Blandford

1829-1911

Vol IV

Pg 168

b.7 March 1829 d.18 August 1911

BA Oxon(1852) BM(1857) MA DM MRCS LSA FRCP(1869)

Fielding Blandford was born at Hindon, Wiltshire, the only son of George Blandford, a medical practitioner. He went to school at Tonbridge and Rugby. An undergraduate of Wadham College, Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1852, he studied medicine at St. George’s Hospital and graduated as B.M. in 1857. His friendship with A. J. Sutherland, F.R.C.P, led him to specialise in mental diseases, and from 1859 to 1863 he acted as resident medical officer at Blacklands House, a private asylum owned by Sutherland. He then obtained appointments as visiting physician to Blacklands House and its successor Newlands House, Tooting, to Otto House, Hammersmith, to Featherstone Hall, Southall, and to Clarence Lodge, Clapham Park. From 1874 to 1895 he was proprietor of Munster House, Fulham. He was lecturer on psychological medicine at St. George’s Hospital from 1865 to 1902.

Blandford was regarded as an authority on legislation dealing with lunacy. He was the author of a book on Insanity and its Treatment (1871), which enjoyed an international reputation for twenty years. He was president of the Medico-Psychological Association in 1877 and delivered the Lumleian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians in 1895. A fine athlete as a young man, he found, in later life, interests in literature, music and art, being an early collector of Whistler’s work. He served in the 2nd (South) Middlesex Volunteers for some years. He married in 1864 Louisa, only daughter of Rev. George Holloway, and had two sons and two daughters.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1911; B.M.J., 1911; D.N.B., 2nd Suppl., i, 176; Al.Oxon., i, 121]