Sir Francis Henry Champneys, 1st Baronet, FRCP (25 March 1848, London – 30 July 1930, Nutley, Sussex, England)[1][2] was an eminent obstetrician known for raising the status of midwives in the early twentieth century, by his campaigning for their training and certification and for supporting the founding of the History of Medicine Society in 1912.

His father was William Champneys, then rector of St Mary's, later Canon of St Paul's Cathedral and later Dean of Lichfield from 1868 to 1875, and his mother, Mary Anne, was daughter of the goldsmith and silversmith Paul Storr (his cousins thus including Rev.

[8] As a child and before the invention of perforation, Champneys would spend Sunday afternoons cutting sheets of stamps.

The act required midwives to be trained and examined in a maternity hospital.

He died on 31 July 1930 at age 83 years at his Nutley home and was succeeded by his son, Weldon Dalrymple-Champneys, who also became a physician.