H. J. Banks-Davis was born in London, the son of Henry William Davis, R.A, and educated partly in France and partly at Marlborough. Entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1885, he rowed in his College eight and took his B.A. degree in 1888. St. Thomas’s was his Hospital and, after graduating in 1895, he remained there for a time as house surgeon and demonstrator of practical surgery. Choosing diseases of the throat and ear as his speciality, he became chief assistant in the throat and ear department of the Middlesex Hospital and paid visits to the Paris, Berlin and Vienna schools. In this period he also acted as surgeon to the national fund of the Red Cross in the Graeco-Turkish War of 1897, receiving the Greek Order of the Saviour for his services, and helped to administer funds for soldiers invalided from the Boer War.

In 1900 he was appointed assistant physician at the West London Hospital, and four years later assistant surgeon in the ear, nose and throat department, receiving full charge in 1908 and becoming eventually consulting surgeon on his retirement in 1926. He also lectured on his subject to the Postgraduate College. He acted as aural referee to the Civil Service and represented his old University at conferences on laryngology and otology. During the 1914-1918 War he held specialist appointments in naval hospitals. Banks-Davis was a keen angler, salmon-fishing on the Wye being his favourite recreation. He was a man both of personality and of modesty. He died unmarried in London.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1936; B.M.J., 1936; Al.Cantab., ii, 248]