Noel Bardswell was born at Kingston-on-Thames, the son of William Bardswell, recorder of that town. He was educated at Sherborne and studied medicine at Edinburgh University and Guy’s Hospital. After graduating as M.B, C.M, in 1895, he obtained junior appointments at the Edinburgh and Sheffield Royal Infirmaries and at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic and the Brompton Hospital in London. He also served as a ship’s surgeon for a time and spent a year running a cheap dispensary off the Old Kent Road in London. Having grown interested, while at Sheffield, in the Nordracli treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis, he was chosen in 1900 as second physician for David Lawson’s new Deeside Sanatorium at Banchory in Scotland. Two years later he succeeded Burton-Fanning as medical superintendent of the Mundes-ley Sanatorium in Norfolk, and in 1906 obtained the same post at the new King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst. There he remained, apart from war service as a major in the R.A.M.C., until 1917, when, on his resignation, he was created M.V.O. He was awarded the Weber-Parkes Prize and Medal by the Royal College of Physicians in 1915.

Bardswell now succeeded J. E. Squire as medical adviser to the London Insurance Committee, and, when, in 1921, the administration of sanatorium benefit was transferred to the London County Council, he became a principal assistant medical officer on its establishment. His last task, after retiring in 1936, was to conduct a survey of tuberculosis in Cyprus for the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. Bardswell was an oddly informal figure, careless in dress and casual in manner. But he lacked neither tact nor ability, and was instrumental in raising the standard of treatment in the institutions that came under his care. He married in 1907 Monica, daughter of John Mack of Paston Hall, Norfolk, who shared his interest in archaeology. They had two sons and two daughters. He died at Cheam.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1938; B.M.J., 1938]