Henry Oldham

Henry Oldham (31 January 1815 – 1902) was an English obstetric physician and co-founder of the Obstetrical Society of London.

Life

The sixth son and ninth child of Adam Oldham (1781–1839) of Balham, a solicitor, was born on 31 January 1815; his mother, Ann Lane, was a daughter of William Stubbington Penny, and Charles James Oldham (1843–1907) the university benefactor was a nephew. Educated at James Balaam's school at Clapham and at London University, entered in 1834 the medical school of Guy's Hospital. In May 1837 he became M.R.C.S. England; in September following a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries; in 1843 a licentiate, and in 1857 fellow, of the Royal College of Physicians of London.

Works

Before his appointment at Guy's Hospital, Oldham studied embryology in the developing chick by means of coloured injections and the microscope. He made 17 contributions to "Guy's Hospital Reports", besides writing four papers in the Transactions of the Obstetrical Society of London (of which he was one of the founders, an original trustee, and President in 1863–5). He invented the term "missed labour", that is, when the child dies in the womb and labour fails to come on; but the specimen on which he based his view was later differently interpreted. He also researched menstruation.

Family

Oldham married in 1838 Sophia (died 1885), eldest daughter of James Smith of Peckham, and had six children, four daughters and two sons, of whom one died in infancy and the other was Colonel Sir Henry Hugh Oldham, C.V.O.