Victor Horsley - Personal Life

Personal Life

Sir Victor Horsley was born in Kensington, London, the son of Rosamund Haden and John Callcott Horsley R.A. His given names, "Victor Alexander", were given to him by Queen Victoria.

In 1883 he became engaged to Eldred Bramwell, daughter of Sir Frederick Bramwell. Subsequently, on 4 October 1887, Victor and Eldred married at St. Margaret's, Westminster. They had two sons, Siward and Oswald and one daughter Pamela.

He was knighted in 1902.

Victor Horsley was a champion of many causes. One of his primary life's crusades was the temperance movement. Having observed that many injuries admitted to the hospital were due to alcohol, Horsley threw himself into becoming a temperance reformer. He soon rose up to the position of a vice-president of the National Temperance League and the president of the British Medical Temperance Association. In 1907, along with Dr. Mary Sturge he published a book on alcoholism called Alcohol and the Human Body.

According to his biographers, Tan & Black (2002), "Horsley's kindness, humility, and generous spirit endeared him to patients, colleagues, and students. Born to privilege, he was nonetheless dedicated to improving the lot of the common man and directed his efforts toward the suffrage of women, medical reform, and free health care for the working class (...) An iconoclast of keen intellect, unlimited energy, and consummate skill, his life and work justify his epitaph as a "pioneer of neurological surgery."

In the outbreak of the First World War, Sir Victor requested for active duty in the Western Front, but was posted in 1915 as a colonel and Director of Surgery of the British Army Medical Service in Egypt, in the Dardanelles Campaign. In the following year he volunteered for field surgery duty in Mesopotamia, where he died unexpectedly in Amarah, Iraq, on 16 July 1916, of heatstroke and severe hyperpyrexia, at only 59 years of age.

Horsley was the first neurosurgeon appointed to the hospital in Queen Square, London, now called the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery – the Victor Horsely Department of Neurosurgery is named in his honour. The Walton Centre for Neurology & Neurosurgery NHS Trust in Liverpool, England, another leading Neurosurgical Hospital dedicated their Intensive Care Unit to Sir Victor Horsley and is called the Horsley ward.