Edward Fawcett 1867-1942

Professor Edward Fawcett, who held the chair of human anatomy in the University of Bristol for forty-one years (1893-1934), and was elected to the Royal Society in 1923, died suddenly as he walked up Lower Park Row, Bristol, on 23 September 1942, in his seventy-sixth year. Just before his collapse in the street, he had climbed a flight of steps (‘Christmas Steps’); it was found that death was due to the rupture of an abdominal aneurism which had escaped diagnosis. He was fair in colouring, stood about six feet in height, with an erect carriage, body and limbs being well proportioned; he excelled in both cricket and at golf. He had exceptional manipulative skill, a gift which served him well in his chosen profession, particularly when he came to reconstruct enlarged models of embryonic and foetal skulls from serial microscopic sections, for in his earlier years he had to be laboratory assistant as well as professor. Carpentry was a pastime, so was photography, which in his retired years assisted him to make accurate records of archaeological features of the churches of surrounding counties—Gloucester, Somerset, and Wilts. He was a man of action rather than of speech; he preferred to let his models and photographs speak for him. Generalizations did not attract him; his aim in life was to provide accurate data to serve as a foundation for generalizations, the drawing of which he was content to leave to others. He had the uncommon faculty of using both hands independently when illustrating his lectures by drawings on the blackboard. Edward Fawcett was the son of Thomas Fawcett, B.A., of Little Blencoe, near Penrith, where he was born, 18 May 1867.