John Beddoe was born at Bewdley, the son of John Beddoe and his wife Emma, daughter of Henry Barrer Child of Bewdley. He was educated at Bridgnorth School and was originally intended for a legal career. He entered University College, London, however, with the intention of becoming a doctor, and, having taken the B.A. degree in 1851, went on to Edinburgh University and graduated as M.D. there in 1853. He was given a house appointment at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, but during the Crimean War served in a civil hospital at Renkioi. After an extended tour of the Continent, he settled in Clifton in 1857. He was physician to the Bristol Royal Infirmary from 1862 to 1873 and consulting physician to the Children’s Hospital after 1866 and to the Bristol Dispensary.

Beddoe was chiefly known for his anthropological studies. Among his works were papers on the Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles (1870) and on The Races of Britain (1885). He was president in 1869-70 of the Anthropological Society and from 1889 to 1891 of the Anthropological Institute, whose Huxley lecture he delivered in 1905. He was also a member of many foreign anthropological societies. He gave the Rhind lectures at Edinburgh in 1891. He married in 1858 Agnes Montgomerie Cameron, daughter of Rev. A. Christison, by whom he had a son and a daughter. He retired in 1891 to Bradford-on-Avon, where he died.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1911; B.M.J., 1911; D.N.B., 2nd Suppl., I, 124]