Joseph Olliffe was born at Cork, the son of Joseph Olliffe, merchant, and Elizabeth, daughter of Charles McCarthy of Sunville, Limerick. He was educated in Paris and graduated as M.D. at the University in 1840. He first acted as tutor in the family of the Comte de Cresnoi but in 1840 set up in practice in Paris. Louis-Philippe appointed him Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1846, and he was promoted to Officer by Napoleon III in 1855. In 1852 he became physician to the British Embassy and in the following year he was knighted at Buckingham Palace. He was also a fellow of the Paris Anatomical Society and president of the Medical Society. In the International Exhibitions of 1855 and 1862, he acted as an assessor for the Board of Trade. He enjoyed a large private practice and a distinguished social position. Thanks to an inheritance on his marriage to Laura, daughter of Sir William Cubitt, in 1841, he was able to entertain on a lavish scale. At the end of his life, he entered, with his friend the Comte de Morny, on a plan for the extension of Deauville as a popular watering-place, but the undertaking was not a financial success. He died at Brighton.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1869; B.M.J., 1869; D.N.B., xliii, 158]