Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Heslop, Thomas Pretious

1388755Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 26 — Heslop, Thomas Pretious1891George Thomas Bettany

HESLOP, THOMAS PRETIOUS (1823–1885), physician, was born in the West Indies in 1823, his father being a Scottish officer of artillery, and his mother an Irish lady named Owen. His youth was spent with his uncle, Dr. Underhill of Tipton, Staffordshire, by whom he was educated for the medical profession. He completed his course at Dublin and Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1848. After being house-physician to the General Hospital, Birmingham, from 1848 to 1852, Heslop was lecturer on physiology at Queen's College, Birmingham, from 1853 to 1858, and physician to the Queen's Hospital from 1853 to 1860 and from 1870 to 1882. He actively promoted the establishment of the Women's Hospital, the Free Hospital for Children, and the Skin and Lock Hospital at Birmingham, and of the Birmingham Medical Institute. He did important work as a governor of King Edward's Grammar School, and as chairman of Mason's College; to the latter institution he gave a library of eleven thousand books. He died near Braemar on 17 June 1885, of angina pectoris, and was buried at Dublin on 20 June. Heslop wrote ‘The Realities of Medical Attendance on the Sick Children of the Poor in Large Towns,’ 1869.

[Birmingham Daily Post, 18, 19, 20 June 1885.]