James Hinton - Life

Life

He was born at Reading, Berkshire, the son of John Howard Hinton (1791–1873), Baptist minister and author of the History and Topography of the United States and other works. James was educated at his grandfather's school near Oxford, and at the Nonconformist school at Harpenden, and in 1838, on his father's removal to London, was apprenticed to a woollen-draper in Whitechapel. After working there for about a year he became clerk in an insurance office. His evenings were spent in intense study, and this, combined with a concentration on moral problems, so affected his health that, aged eighteen, he tried to seek refuge from his own thoughts by running away to sea. His intention having been discovered, he was sent, on the advice of his doctor, to St Bartholomew's Hospital to study for the medical profession. After receiving his diploma in 1847, he was for some time assistant surgeon at Newport, Essex, but the same year he went out to Sierra Leone to take medical charge of the free labourers on their voyage thence to Jamaica, where he stayed some time. He returned to England in 1850, and entered into partnership with a surgeon in London, where he soon had his interest awakened specially in aural surgery, and also studied physiology.

After being appointed aural surgeon to Guy's Hospital in 1863, he soon acquired a reputation as the most skillful aural surgeon of his day. In the 1870s his health began to break down, and in 1874 he gave up practice. He died the following year at the Azores of "acute inflammation of the brain".