Obituary – James Maurice Harrison, DSC, MRCS, LRCP (1892-1971)

James Harrison was born in the reign of Queen Victoria in the year of Gladstone’s fourth ministry. He died nearly eighty years later, having lived through a period of great scientific and industrial developments, two major world wars and extensive social changes. One of his most endearing characteristics was his ability to adapt to the times; though he may not always have agreed with the changes around him, his disagreements were tempered by unfailing courtesy and good humour. Educated at Malvern College and Felstead, he opted to enter St Thomas’s Hospital as a medical student rather than join the family shipping business. His choice of career was probably influenced by his father, who was a governor of St Thomas’s. At the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, when he was a senior student, he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon probationer serving on destroyers in the Dover patrol. He returned to St Thomas’s in order to qualify and rejoined the Navy as a surgeon-lieutenant. He served mainly in the eastern Mediterranean and was the sole officer to survive the sinking of H.M. Monitor 28. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery in towing through the water for over a mile a marine whose leg had been blown off, and for his attention to the wounded on land. At the end of the war he married Rita Graham Sorley and in 1920 settled as a general practitioner in Sevenoaks. He served the community well, for he retired from

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