Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Ashby, Henry
ASHBY, HENRY (1846–1908), physician, born at Carshalton, Surrey, on 8 March 1846, was the son of John and Charlotte Ashby, both members of the Society of Friends. Educated firstly at Ackworth School, near Pontefract, and from 1864 at the Flounder's Institute, Ackworth (belonging also to the Society of Friends), Ashby after some experience as a teacher entered Guy's Hospital. Winning the gold medal for clinical medicine, he was for two years assistant in the physiological laboratory and also resident obstetric and house physician. He was admitted M.R.C.S. in 1873 and graduated M.B. in 1874 and M.D. in 1878 with a gold medal in the University of London. In 1875 he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy and physiology in the Liverpool School of Medicine and assistant physician to the Liverpool Infirmary for Children. In 1878 he removed to Manchester to become honorary physician to the Manchester Hospital for Diseases of Children (known as Pendlebury Hospital). From 1880 to 1882 he was evening lecturer on animal physiology in the Owens College, and from 1880 till death lecturer on diseases of children, first in the Owens College and then in the Victoria University. He became a member in 1883 and a fellow in 1890 of the Royal College of Physicians. An active member of the medical societies of Manchester, he promoted the transformation of the microscopical section of the Medical Society into the Pathological Society (1885), of which he was the first president (1885-6). He also was president of the Medical Society and of the Medico-Ethical Association. In 1902, when the British Medical Association visited Manchester, he was president of the section on children's diseases.
Ashby, who rapidly acquired a very large practice as consultant on children's diseases, zealously devoted himself to the welfare of poor children. He was honorary consulting physician of the schools in and near Manchester for the crippled and deaf and dumb. When the Manchester education committee undertook the education of the feeble- minded children, he helped and reported on the work unofficially for two years (1902), and was special medical adviser to the committee from 1904. In 1904 he gave important evidence before the departmental committee on physical deterioration appointed by the lord president of the council. Of especial value was the medical advice and guidance which Ashby gave Miss Mary Dendy, who successfully founded in 1898 the Lancashire and Cheshire society for the permanent care of the feeble-minded; the object being not only to educate such persons but to take care of them throughout their lives, so as to prevent them transmitting their disability. Schools were opened, and a colony which was established at Sandlebridge in Cheshire (1902) provided in 1911 accommodation for 268 residents. A royal commission on the care and control of the feeble-minded, before which Ashby gave evidence of importance in 1905, was largely an outcome of Ashby's support of Miss Dendy's experiments. In 1905 on Ashby's advice the Manchester education committee inaugurated a residential school for cripple children at Swinton, the only one of its kind under municipal administration. Ashby enjoyed a world-wide reputation as an expert on diseases of children, and his wards at Pendlebury were visited by physicians from the Continent and America. In later life he closely studied the psychology of the child, and began a book on the subject which he did not live to complete. In 1905 he delivered the Wightman lecture on 'Some neuroses of early life.'
He died on 6 July 1908 at his residence, Didsbury, Manchester, and was cremated at the Manchester crematorium, his ashes being buried in St. James, Birch, churchyard. He married in 1879 Helen, daughter of the Rev. Francis Edward Tuke of Borden, Kent, and left two sons, one of whom entered the medical profession, and one daughter.
A memorial scholarship was founded by Ashby's friends in the Victoria University of Manchester, to be awarded triennially for the encouragement of the study of diseases of children. A tablet placed by the family at Pendlebury Hospital commemorates his services to the institution.
Apart from papers on diseases of children Ashby wrote with Mr. George Arthur Wright: 'Diseases of Children, Medical and Surgical' (1899; 5th ed. 1905), a standard text-book. His other books were: 'Notes on Physiology' (1878; 8th ed. 1910, edited by Ashby's son, Hugh) and 'Health in the Nursery' (1898; 3rd ed. 1908).
[Personal knowledge; information from Mrs. Ashby, Mr. Hugh Ashby, M.B. (Camb.), M.R.C.P., and Miss Dendy; Brit. Med. Journal, 25 July 1908; Lancet, 18 July 1908; Manchester Guardian, 7 July 1908 (with portrait).]