W. H. B. Stoddart, the son of William Stoddart, a surveyor, was educated at the City of London School and University College. Qualifying in 1893, he held a succession of junior appointments at University College Hospital, the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic, the Bethlem Royal Hospital, and Prestwich Mental Hospital in Lancashire. In 1898 he returned to the Bethlem Hospital as an assistant medical officer and in 1911 succeeded Craig as physician-superintendent. He lectured on mental diseases at the Royal Free and Westminster Hospitals and the London School of Clinical Medicine. In 1914, however, he resigned all his existing appointments to enter consulting practice and accepted a lectureship at St. Thomas’s Hospital, where later he was made physician for mental diseases. He examined on behalf of London University. In 1901 he was awarded the Gaskell gold medal of the Medico-Psychological Association, and in 1915 he gave the Morison lectures at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He was the author of a textbook, Mind and its Disorders (1908), whose earlier editions were highly regarded, and, as a disciple of Freud, he played a notable part in the development of psychiatry and psycho-analysis. A leisurely, almost indolent, manner disguised Stoddart’s essential vitality and conviction as he conducted his pupils round the wards, a vast, portly figure arrayed in morning coat and top hat. His talents were given full scope outside his work. He was a fine athlete, musician and actor, and a charming host and companion. He married in 1909 Mrs. Rosa Johnstone, matron of the Bethlem Hospital. He died in London.

G H Brown

[Lancet, 1950; B.M.J., 1950]