Hugh Lett

Who is Hugh Lett?

Sir Hugh Lett, 1st Baronet, KCVO, CBE, FRCS was a British surgeon.

Lett was born in Waddingham, Lincolnshire, the eldest of eight children of local general practitioner Dr Richard Alfred Lett and his wife Bithiah. His younger sister, Phyllis, later became a famous contralto. He was educated at Marlborough College and the University of Leeds and then trained as a doctor at the London Hospital from 1896. He returned to Leeds to graduate MBBCh in 1899 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1902.

He worked at the London Hospital, being appointed surgical registrar in 1902, assistant surgeon in 1905, surgeon in 1915, and later senior surgeon. He also served as lecturer in anatomy and clinical and operative surgery from 1909 to 1912. He was a general surgeon, but had a special interest in urology and headed the hospital's genito-urinary department for many years. In 1905 he published a study of the treatment of breast cancer by removal of the ovaries, one of the earliest studies in this field. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he was commissioned into the Royal Army Medical Corps and served at the Anglo-American Hospital at Wimereux in France from 1914 to 1915, the Belgian field hospital at Veurne in 1915, and then in Egypt. He resigned his commission in November 1916 with the rank of major and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in January 1920.