Samuel Croker-King

Croker-King married the noted beauty Miss Obre, and they resided for many years in the then fashionable Jervis Street. His first professional appointment was as surgeon to Steevens' Hospital in 1758, an establishment of which he later became a visiting surgeon and governor. This was published in book form by P. Dixon Hardy & Sons of Dublin in 1854, after Croker-King's death. In 1816 he gave evidence about the duties of the apothecary at the hospital, noting that in addition to preparing the medicines and dressings required by the hospital's physicians and surgeons, the apothecary was responsible for seeing that medicines were taken, had to be constantly at the hospital, and "especially" was required to sleep at the hospital every night.

In addition to Steevens' Hospital, Croker-King was surgeon to the Rotunda Hospital, to the Revenue Department, and to the Hospital for Venereal Diseases in North King Street.

His patients came mainly from the upper classes as shown by his fee-book which includes the noble houses of Charlemont, Enniskillen, Farnham, Howth, Leitrim, Tyrone, and Westmeath. The surgeon J. W. Cusack said of Croker-King, "He lived by the nobility and great landed proprietors, whilst I live by the people", adding, "but I make more money than he did."

Incidents He was credited with saving the life of the child who became the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) after the child was brought to him following an incorrect diagnosis by a country doctor.

In order to remedy the defects of existing devices, Croker-King had developed his own trepanning device which had been built specially for him by John Read, a cutlery and instrument maker of Skinner Row, Dublin. It could be used either as a trepan or as a trephine and did not require any force or pressure to cut through the skull, thus avoiding the risk of accidentally damaging the brain. Croker-King wrote that he and other surgeons in Dublin had already used the device successfully. "Description of an Instrument for Performing the Operation of Trepanning the Skull, with More Ease, Safety and Expedition, than Those Now in General Use", Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 4 (1790–1792), pp. 119–139.