William Blizard

Sir William Blizard (1743 to 1835) was an English surgeon of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born at Barn Elms in Surrey, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary and then studied at the London Hospital under Percivall Pott and John Hunter. He became a surgeon at the London Hospital in 1780 and in 1785 helped found its medical school, largely at his own expense. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1787, lectured on surgery and anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, served twice as its president and founded the Hunterian Society, of which he was first president. He was knighted in 1803, spoke against child labour in the cotton mills, and the Blizard Building at Whitechapel is named after him. He died aged 92.