Henry Gawen Sutton was born at Middlesbrough of a ship-owning family, received his medical education at King’s College, London, and, after graduating as M.B. in 1860, started general practice at Holloway. But early in his career he acquired a deep interest in pathology and for some years worked in the pathological department at Guy’s Hospital, where he was closely associated with Gull and Wilks. He set up as a consultant and obtained the appointment of assistant physician at the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest. His main connection was with the London Hospital, where he was appointed pathologist in 1866, assistant physician in 1867 and physician in 1876. Pathology remained his chief concern and the basis on which he founded both his clinical practice and his medical teaching. After his work in the wards, he would spend many hours, sometimes late into the night, in the post mortem room, and his knowledge rapidly became encyclopaedic. With little ambition to publish, Sutton was a born teacher, and in this way he exercised an influence altogether out of proportion to his writings. Small, shy and slightly deaf, fond of poetry and fishing, he was held in the highest regard by students and doctors, and the rising reputation of the London Hospital Medical School was largely due not only to his organising abilities but to his own personal qualities. Sutton left a widow and two daughters.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1891; B.M.J., 1891]