He is considered the first person to offer a professional tattoo service in London, although the practice was already popular in Japan and the Middle East prior to that time.

[1] He was erroneously said to have tattooed kings and princes, including George V when he was Duke of York.

[2] Sutherland Macdonald was born in Boundary Terrace, Leeds on 25 June 1860.

He served in the British Army in the 1870s as a telegraph operator in the Royal Engineers and was in the Anglo-Zulu War.

[3] In addition to artistic designs, he also performed color blending on skin grafts of accident victims.