Rayner Batten was born at Devonport, the son of John Batten, merchant, of Plymouth, and his wife Mary, daughter of William Winterbotham, a well-known Nonconformist minister who had been fined and imprisoned at Exeter in 1793 for preaching a seditious sermon. He was educated in Plymouth and apprenticed to two Plymouth doctors. He qualified from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1857, having passed his examinations with high distinction, and then served in house appointments there and at the Hospital for Sick Children. In the early ’sixties, having acted for a few years as assistant physician to the Metropolitan Free Hospital, he left London and settled in Gloucester. There he was elected physician to the General Infirmary, becoming consulting physician twenty-two years later. He also held appointments at the Gloucester Dispensary and Berkeley Cottage Hospital. Batten was a lover of music, being a steward of the Three Choirs Festivals, and a staunch teetotaller. He married, firstly, Marion, daughter of Solomon Leonard Clifton, and, secondly, Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Bowly, and left a son and two daughters. He died at Gloucester.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1909; B.M.J., 1909; Presidential Address to R.C.P., 1910, 13]