Rugby Union enthusiasts who have no personal recollections of the game when it was played only by amateurs, must find it hard to believe that during the 15 years before the outbreak of the First World War, the Edinburgh University Rugby team was one of the strongest and most consistently successful in the British Isles.
The XV of 1907-08 is arguably the best ever to have represented Edinburgh University and it was captained by an English medical student who subsequently became a Fellow of the College and who, in addition to winning even greater celebrity upon the rugby field, went on to a professional career of the highest distinction.
Lancelot Edward Barrington-Ward, born at Worcester in 1884, was the second of five sons of an Anglican clergyman, all of whom were King’s (or Queen’s) Scholars at Westminster School and all of whom were destined to make their marks in their respective callings.
One of the five brothers was a highly influential journalist was edited “The Times” from 1941-1948 and another became General Manager of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER).
After a classical education at Westminster and Bromsgrove Schools and Worcester College, Oxford, Lancelot Barrington-Ward entered the medical faculty of Edinburgh University from which he graduated MBChB with honours in 1908. Throughout his undergraduate course he played rugby for the University and in his final year was captain of a truly great XV, more than half of whom were current or future Internationalists or International triallists. Four members of this team which won all its matches and the Scottish Club Championships went on in later life to achieve the honour of Knighthood. Barrington-Ward also boxed for the University as a middleweight.
After holding resident hospital posts in Edinburgh and in London, he gained the Fellowship of the College in 1910 and two years later, the Fellowship of the English College. In 1913 he proceeded to the ChM of Edinburgh University with honours and with the award of the Chiene Medal in Surgery.
In 1910 he became House Surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and this was the start of an association with that famous institution which lasted for the whole of his career and which was crowned thirty years later by his appointment as its senior surgeon.
After moving from Edinburgh to London he continued to play first class rugby and in 1910 his prowess was recognised by the award of four English International caps. He had the distinction of playing in the very first International match played at Twickenham and the England team of which he was a member were Five Nations Champions with three victories and one draw. Barrington-Ward is reputed to have been the smallest and lightest forward ever to play for England and to compensate for his slight physique, he must have had exceptional playing skills combined with speed and supreme fitness.
In December 1914 he was appointed Assistant Surgeon at Great Ormond Street but by this time the First World War was raging and he volunteered for duty as Surgeon-in-Chief to Lady Wimburnes Hospital at Uskub in Serbia. For his distinguished services in this capacity he was awarded the Serbian Order of St Sava. Later he worked as a surgeon in British military hospitals and in 1918 he operated on HRH Prince Albert (later King George VI) for appendicitis.
Following demobilisation Barrington-Ward returned to civilian surgery at Great Ormond Street where he soon established his reputation as a paediatric surgeon. In 1919 he was appointed surgeon to the Royal Northern Hospital, Holloway Road, London and this enabled him also to build up a substantial adult practice.
During the 1920’s and 1930’s he achieved international recognition in the field of paediatric surgery and his book “The Abdominal Surgery of Childhood” became a standard didactic text. His contributions to adult abdominal surgery were scarcely less distinguished and many of them were embodied in the chapters he wrote for “Royal Northern Operative Surgery”, first two editions of which he edited.
In 1935 he was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) and, in the following year, was appointed Surgeon to the Household of HRH The Duke of York who, as Prince Albert, had been his patient eighteen years previously. Following the Duke’s accession to the throne as King George VI, Barrington-Ward became Surgeon to the Royal Household and, in 1952 after his retirement from active surgical practice, he was honoured by HM Queen Elizabeth II with the appointment of extra-Surgeon to her Household.
In the course of his professional career, he operated on three other members of the Royal Family, including Queen Maud of Norway who honoured him with the award of the Grand Cross of the Order of St Olav.
He was President of the Section of Children’s Diseases of the Royal Society of Medicine and Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England barely a year before he died. For several years he was an external examiner in surgery for the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh and the renewal of his links with his alma mater afforded by the latter commitment was a source of great pleasure to him.
Barrington-Ward’s reputation in paediatric surgery owed as much to his innate gentleness and kindliness as to his intellect and his clinical and operative skills.
His remarkable ability to gain the confidence of his young patients and to establish a close rapport with them made a profound impression on colleagues, nurses and students and, most importantly, gave immeasurable comfort and reassurance to anxious parents.
Lancelot Barrington-Ward was a man of many parts who in every aspect of his life brought honour to the Edinburgh University medical school and the College, of which he was an illustrious Fellow, is proud to salute his memory.
