Herbert Lightfoot Eason

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Herbert Lightfoot Eason CB, CMG, MD, MS, FRCS.

[2] He was born on 15 July 1874 in Lewisham, the son of Mary Ann Moore and Edward Henry Physick Eason, an auctioneer and surveyor of Bishopsgate.

[9] While serving in Egypt he formed a life-long friendship with General (later Field-Marshal and 1st Viscount) Edmund Allenby, who Eason was to later describe as the greatest man he ever met in his long life of many distinguished contacts.

However, he is noted as a highly skilled surgeon and operator, and as a teacher his lectures were said to be unequalled and were always fully attended in both under and post-graduate studies.

[10] Eason was a tall, thin man with long sensitive fingers, and in heated debate he is said to have always stood his ground and was rarely if ever wrong, although he always spoke his mind and cared not for upsetting people whom he considered pompous or insincere.

Throughout the 1920s and 30s they lived at Guy's Hospital in the Superintendent's eighteenth-century house, although after its destruction by German Luftwaffe bombing in 1941, the family moved to their home at Newbridge Mill, Coleman's Hatch in Sussex.

Lieutenant Colonel Sir Herbert Lightfoot Eason died on 2 November 1949 at Nuffield House, Guy's Hospital.

A memorial service to him was held in Guy's Hospital chapel on 11 November 1949, which was announced in the (London) Times.