Walter Foster, 1st Baron Ilkeston

Balthazar Walter Foster, 1st Baron Ilkeston PC FRCP (17 July 1840 – 31 January 1913) was a British physician and politician.

Early life and education

He was born to Balthazar Foster and his wife Marian ( Green), in Cambridge on 17 July 1840. In 1847 the family moved to Ireland, and Foster was educated at Drogheda Grammar School. In 1857 Foster attended Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied medicine. After graduation he became Prolector of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, but abandoned hopes of a medical career, even going as far as to apply for a naval commission.

In 1860, however, he was appointed Demonstrator in Practical Anatomy at Queen's College, Birmingham (a predecessor college of Birmingham University), later being appointed Professor of Anatomy. In 1864 he obtained his MD from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. That same year, he married Emily Martha Sargant.

Medical career On the merger of Queen's and Sydenham colleges in 1868 he was appointed Professor of Medicine, a position he held until 1892. He became a doctor at Birmingham General Hospital, where he was galvanized by what he described as a "new atmosphere of modern thought and scientific enterprise" compared to the traditionalism of medicine in Dublin. as a Liberal candidate with a programme of free education and improved housing for the poor.

Although a strong supporter of Joseph Chamberlain, Foster did not reject Irish Home Rule in 1886 as Chamberlain did. In 1886, he was made President of the National Liberal Federation, where he played a large part in keeping Chamberlain's supporters loyal to William Ewart Gladstone. Foster was unseated by the faggot votes of the duke of Westminster's tenants at the Liberal defeat in the 1886 election, suggested a retirement from politics, but Foster returned to Westminster in 1887, elected for Ilkeston after a by-election.

In 1892, he was made Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, becoming the first doctor to hold a ministerial post in Britain. After his sixth victory at Ilkeston in 1910 he was asked to vacate his seat to allow J. E. B. Seely, recently defeated in his own constituency, to take his place. Foster took the position of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, effectively resigning from the House of Commons, and Seely was duly elected in March 1910.

In 1910, he was elevated to the peerage, as Baron Ilkeston, of Ilkeston in the County of Derby, although he did little in the House of Lords due to his growing ill-health. A bowel obstruction was successfully operated on in 1911, but he died of bowel cancer in London on 31 January 1913, aged 72.

Works Among his publications, were: The Use of the Sphygmograph in Heart Diseases (1866) Method and Medicine (1870) Clinical Medicine (1874) Political Powerlessness of the Medical Profession (1883) Public Aspects of Medicine (1890)