Somerville Hastings, FRCS (4 March 1878 – 7 July 1967) was a British surgeon and Labour Party politician.
Thora Silverthorne worked for Hastings as a nanny and went on to be secretary of the Socialist Medical Association.
[4] He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, followed by work as an aural surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital.
Edith Summerskill felt that the "idea of a National Health Service germinated in the hospitable atmosphere" of Hastings’ home.
[7] He represented the LCC on the Nurses Salaries Committee which published two reports in 1943[8][9] Somerville Hastings died at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, on 7 July 1967, aged 89.