Edmund Distin Maddick

Edmund Distin Maddick (1857 to 1939) was an English surgeon who became an early figure in British cinema. Born in Clerkenwell, he studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital and served as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, resigning after eleven months. He later acted as honorary surgeon to the London Brigade of Royal Naval Artillery Volunteers and as surgeon to the Italian Hospital in London, and was made a Knight of the Crown of Italy. In his forties he left medicine, rebuilt the Scala Theatre in 1905 and fitted it out as a cinema in 1911. During the First World War he worked for military intelligence on film matters and is linked with the production of The Battle of the Somme, although some of his own claims about wartime posts are not borne out. After the war he used the Scala to teach human anatomy. He received a CBE in 1927.