Sir Francis Champneys, 1st Baronet

Sir Francis Henry Champneys, 1st Baronet, FRCP (25 March 1848, London – 30 July 1930, Nutley, Sussex, England) was an eminent obstetrician known for raising the status of midwives in the early twentieth century, by his campaigning for their training and certification and for supporting the founding of the History of Medicine Society in 1912. Early years Champneys was born in the rectory of St Mary's, Whitechapel on 25 March 1848. His father was William Champneys, then rector of St Mary's, later Canon of St Paul's Cathedral and later Dean of Lichfield from 1868 to 1875, and his mother, Mary Anne, was daughter of the goldsmith and silversmith Paul Storr (his cousins thus including Rev. Vernon Storr, Archdeacon of Westminster from 1931 to 1936, Rev. Frank Utterton, Archdeacon of Surrey from 1906 to 1908, the artists Rex Whistler and Laurence Whistler, and the academic Michael Lindsay, 2nd Baron Lindsay of Birker). Among his six siblings were the architect and author Basil Champneys and the rowing clergyman Weldon Champneys. As a child and before the invention of perforation, Champneys would spend Sunday afternoons cutting sheets of stamps. He was awarded a scholarship to be educated at Winchester College, one of the ancient public schools of England, and later Brasenose College, Oxford. He then, in 1871, became a medical student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1888. Career Champneys was a fellow of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society and was elected president of its successor organisation, the Royal Society of Medicine, in 1912. He supported Sir William Osler in the founding of The History of Medicine Society at The Royal Society of Medicine, London, in the same year.