William Harrison Cripps

William Harrison Cripps (born West Ilsley, Berkshire, 15 January 1850; died London, 8 November 1923) was a prominent British surgeon.

Cripps had scarlet fever as a child and was educated at home by a tutor due to ill health.

In 1876 he won the Jacksonian Prize of the Royal College of Surgeons for an essay titled "The Treatment of Cancer of the Rectum, particularly as regards the possibility of Curing or Relieving the Patient by Excision of the Affected Part".

He served on the finance committee where his financial acumen was useful in transferring the examination hall from the Embankment to Queen Square.

[4] He was responsible for several surgical inventions - an écraseur for removing sections of the lower rectum (later adapted by oral surgeons for use on the tongue) and a rubber rectal dilator.

[5] In a contribution appended to Cripps' obituary in the British Medical Journal, Francis Champneys said that "Cripps was a born surgeon" and "As regards operative work, he was rapid without being hurried; he had beautiful "hands," firm and gentle; he was absolutely concentrated on his work, never flurried, always unruffled and prompt in the face of a mishap.