William Wadd

Who was William Wadd?

William Wadd was a 19th-century British surgeon and medical author.

Wadd, the eldest son of Solomon Wadd, a surgeon, who lived and practised for more than half a century in Basinghall Street, London, was born on 1776, and was entered at Merchant Taylor’s school late in 1784. He was apprenticed to Sir James Earle in 1797, and thus became one of the privileged class of surgeon’s pupils at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons on 18 December 1801, and in 1816 he contested the post of assistant-surgeon to St Bartholomew’s Hospital when John Painter Vincent was elected. He was chosen a member of the College of Surgeons of England in 1824, and was appointed a member of the court of examiners in succession to John Abernethy on 3 August 1829. He was appointed one of the surgeons extraordinary to George IV on 30 March 1821.

He was killed instantaneously on 29 August 1829 in Killarney, Kerry in by jumping off a runaway carriage on the road from Killarney to Mitchelstown while he was making a holiday tour in the south of Ireland.