Fleetwood Churchill

Fleetwood Churchill M.D. (1808–1878) was an English physician, known as an obstetrician and medical writer.

Life Churchill was born at Nottingham, where his businessman father died when he was three years old, and he was educated by his mother. He was apprenticed to a general practitioner at Nottingham in 1822, and then studied in London, Dublin, Paris, and Edinburgh, where he graduated M.D. in 1831. He went in 1832 to Dublin to study midwifery, and set up in practice there.

Having become a licentiate of the King and Queen's College of Physicians, Churchill was involved in establishing a small maternity hospital (the Western, cf Rotunda Hospital), and instructed students in midwifery there. He was by then married, and entered on a successful career as teacher, writer, and practitioner: his income reached £3,000 a year. In 1851 an honorary degree of M.D. was conferred upon him by Trinity College, Dublin; he was king's professor of midwifery in the School of Physic from 1856 to 1864; he was twice president of the Obstetrical Society of Dublin, in 1856 and 1864; and he was president of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in 1867–8.