After education at Repton, Harold Wordsworth Barber matriculated at Clare College, Cambridge and graduated there in natural sciences in 1908.
After medical education at Guy's Hospital, he graduated in 1911 BCh and in 1912 MB from the University of Cambridge.
In 1915 he joined the RAMC and during WWI served in India, Mesopotamia, German East Africa, and France.
[3] He returned in 1919 to Guy's Hospital as medical registrar and later in that year was appointed physician-in-charge of the department for skin diseases.
In 1928, under the auspices of the Medical Society of London, he gave the Lettsomian Lectures on Dermatology in Relation to other Branches of Medicine.