Joseph Fayrer

Sir Joseph Fayrer, 1st Baronet KCSI FRS FRSE FRCS FRCP LLD (6 December 1824 – 21 May 1907) was a British physician who served as Surgeon General in India.

[1] The second son of Robert John Fayrer (1788–1869), a Commander in the Royal Navy, and wife Agnes Wilkinson (d. 1861) he was born at Plymouth, Devon.

The family lived for a time at Haverbrack, Westmorland where Joseph became acquainted with William Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge and John Wilson.

He joined to study medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, London in 1844 and his fellow students included William Guyer Hunter and Thomas Henry Huxley.

He left India on furlough in 1858 and obtained an MD from the University of Edinburgh Medical School in March 1859, presenting the thesis "On amputation at the hip-joint and excision of the head of the femur".

He took considerable interest in the wild animals and wrote a book on the tiger and procured living specimens of the pygmy hogs for the Zoological Society of London.

[3] Fayrer was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Star of India (CSI) in 1868,[10] and promoted to Knight Commander (KCSI) in 1876.

[9] Sir Joseph was created a baronet of Devonshire Street in the parish of St Marylebone in the County of London on 11 February 1896.

[14] His daughter Bethia Marion Fayrer (1857-1892) married William Dobrees Herries and is buried in Canongate Kirkyard in Edinburgh.

Fayrer appears as a supporting character in the 1977 Hindi film "Shatranj Ke Khilari", directed by Satyajit Ray and based on the short story of the same name by Munshi Premchand.