About

• Summary:

  The third of fifteen children, Lionel followed his father into medicine, as would his son John Weston. The three generations of surgeons were instrumental in the development of medical services in Kidderminster, spanning almost 100 years between them.
  Having qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1881 Lionel was appointed Junior Anaesthetist at St Bartholomew’s and planned to stay in London for his career. In August 1882 he resigned and returned to Kidderminster to help his father who was seriously ill. Despite this sacrifice Lionel went on to earn a huge place in medical history, having been responsible for the introduction of tincture of iodine for sterilising the skin, as published in his letter to the British Medical Journal in 1909.
  Having written his Memoirs just before he died in 1943, these were finally published in 2012 by his great grandson.

  See a short summary of his life and achievements in this article, Saints & Sinners, published by the Royal College of Surgeons in 2013, here.

• Archive link: Link to Lionel's documents and images
• No of documents: 57
• No of Images: 41
• No of photo albums: 4
• No of media files: 1
• Born: Thursday, 20 September 1860
• Birthplace: Kidderminster, Worcestershire
• Died: Sunday, 14 February 1943
• Bio:

  
  Family
  The third child of Samuel Stretton and Kate (née Birch), Lionel was one of fifteen children, three of whom died in infancy. He married Lucy Emma Houghton, daughter of J Freeth Houghton of Moseley and had three children, one of whom, John Weston, would follow the family route to become a surgeon.
  Lucy died on 1 November 1948 and both were cremated.

  Early days
  Lionel’s life is well chronicled in the two books, Memoirs of the Iodine Surgeon and Dr Stretton, I presume. (link these to the purchase page in this site).
  His Memoirs report that:
  Our early education was chiefly what we picked up rather than any formal instruction. We had various governesses, but I doubt whether they ever taught me very much. I remember doing a great many copies in copy-books. I know on one occasion when my mother was giving us a dictation I got into great trouble for spelling Europe Yourup. I still think it was a good way of spelling it. Spelling has never been a strong point with me, but in later life I have sometimes managed to conceal uncertainty of spelling by doubtful writing. I fancy that in my early years my brain lay fallow so far as lessons were concerned. That reminds me that a distinguished educationist once told me that he preferred to deal with boys whose brains had lain fallow until they were ten years of age. My own experience tends to support his view.
  His ‘fallow brain’ clearly had an early interest in his father’s medical career, again from his Memoirs:
  While I was still a child I had made up my mind that I should be a surgeon. My mother often put before me the disadvantages of a surgeon’s life, but it was of no avail. I was determined to follow my inclination. I used to drive with my father on his rounds and later I often rode on a pony beside him. I took every opportunity of visiting the hospital - then called the infirmary - and before I was ten years old I often went into the wards. I also got into our own dispensary whenever I could and saw various dressings and extractions of teeth.

  Learning from this, he performed his first ‘operation’ at the age of eleven when he extracted a tooth for a neighbour.

  Education
  In his Memoirs he notes a very relaxed early education. At the local Grammar School when he was 10, he recalls that he had ‘a distaste for lessons and always evaded them by every means I could think of’. It will be no surprise that he was not top of the class. He did, however, excel at games, being captain of the football and cricket teams,

  Lionel left school in 1876 without having obtained any qualifying examinations. He was then sent daily by train to a tutor in Birmingham, passing his preliminary examination for the Royal College of Surgeons in 1877. He was now on course for his medical career and was apprenticed to his father the same year where he gained much practical experience from the extensive general practice.

  In 1878 Lionel worked as an unqualified assistant in a local practice until In October 1878 his father took him to start his training at Bart’s hospital where he was smart enough to choose the ‘right sort’ of friends, noting that ‘There were so many temptations in London and so many tragedies among the students of the hospital. I can quite conceive that I might have gone altogether wrong if I had been introduced into a fast set’.

  He was immediately attracted to the sporting scene, as he had been at school, but then realised that he had a mountain to climb if he was to realise his professional ambitions, so he sent all his sporting kit off back home. This only compounded his early feelings of inadequacy against evidently better educated students but he soon found that his apprenticeship had given him an ‘enormous advantage’ when it came to the practical elements of his training.

  In 1880 Lionel sat the RCS examination and failed. Despite being at the top of his group, he’d mis-read a question and given a good answer, but not the right one in this case.

  Another attempt would follow but not before, in 1881, Lionel collapsed into five days of delirium, having contracted diphtheria and scarlet fever. Thankfully Lionel survived but lost four months in convalescence before passing his exams and gaining his MRCS qualification in October 1881.

  Career
  Following his qualification in 1881 Lionel held various positions at Bart’s before receiving a telegram to say that his father was seriously ill. Resigning his position at the hospital he returned to assist with his father’s practice, helping Samuel to live for another forty years and, again nearly dying himself, when he contracted anthrax and was unconscious for five days in 1904.

  Working together with his father, Samuel and Lionel were instrumental in improving healthcare for the local population. As a surgeon in Kidderminster for 56 years, Lionel carried out over 40,000 operations and was constantly fundraising and driving improvements to the hospital facilities. Financing hospital extensions and keeping the facilities working brought a constant tension with local industrialists, many of whom were reluctant to contribute adequate funds to local health-care projects and often sought to blacken Lionel’s name but this did not stop him realising the improvements that he sought. In 1926 the Duke of York officially opened the hospital extensions, recorded in the short film on this page.

  In developing the hospital facilities both Samuel and Lionel were hugely keen to recognise and promote the status and role of their nurses. As early as 1889 Lionel published a booklet entitled ‘A Course of Ambulance Lectures’ and the hospital was providing high quality training for nurses at that time, being formally recognised as a First Class Training School for Nurses in 1922.

  Promoting cooperation within the profession, on 19 October 1893, Lionel and his father initiated the Kidderminster Medical Society.

  A highlight of Lionel’s career was his innovative work with iodine for the sterilisation of skin prior to surgery. Others had tried using iodine but Lionel’s innovation was to develop and introduce tincture of iodine. Following a series of definitive, scientific trials, he published his findings in a paper, entitled The Sterilization of the Skin of Operation Areas, in the BMJ in August 1909. Use of tincture of iodine was a major surgical advancement and was adopted world-wide. In an appreciation of Lionel, printed in a national newspaper (see here) a week after he died, the author noted that, for his achievements, Lionel should be as well recognised as Joseph Lister.

  Lionel’s inventiveness didn’t end there; he was also responsible for various items of surgical equipment, including the design of aseptic hospital furniture, with which today’s surgeons will be familiar.

  Not only was Lionel focussed on medical improvements but, to promote wider public health improvements, he entered the Town Council in 1888. He served for three years and in order to become thoroughly acquainted with his duties he walked through the main sewer of Kidderminster to assess its condition and also descended the upper well on the Stourport Road in a loop of rope 150 feet long and found everything satisfactory. While a member of the Town Council Mr Stretton was horrified to find three or four families huddled together sleeping in lodging houses in the same room. He advocated the erection of model lodging houses and, when this was not adopted, purchased the Hill House, Orchard Street, which he had converted into a model lodging house which was then run for over 30 years by his ex-chauffeur.

  Recognition of his contributions were numerous, including:
  On January 29th, 1921, a public banquet was given in his honour by the Worcestershire Division of the British Medical Association when he was presented with a silver salver in recognition of his valuable services and of the esteem in which he was held. In addition to being honorary consulting surgeon he was President of Kidderminster Hospital from 1924 to 1938.

  In December 1932, his colleagues on the honorary medical staff presented him with a silver dessert dish on completion of 50 years' active service as surgeon at the hospital. The Matron and nurses gave him a silver cigar box.

  In December 1933, he was honoured by members of his profession from all parts of Worcestershire at a complimentary dinner given at Kidderminster to celebrate his 21st year as chairman of the County of Worcester Local Medical and Panel Committee. Representatives of the Ministry of Health and of Worcestershire Health Insurance Committee were present. At that dinner he was presented with a silver dessert service by the members of that committee.
  In March 1938 Lionel resigned as President of the hospital but continued some practice and consulting work almost to his death.

   Notable aspects
  * Implemented a nurse training system in 1895, approved as a First Class Training School or Nurses in 1922.
  * Introduction of the use of Tincture of Iodine for sterilisation of the skin – paper published in the BMJ in 1909 and subsequently adopted world-wide.
  * Invention of surgical equipment.
  * Fund-raising and building of the hospital extension, opened by the Duke of Your in 1926.
  * Chairmanship of many professional bodies.
  * Survived two near-death events.
  * Famous for his top hat.
  * Owned the first car in Kidderminster.

  Death
  After a few days illness, Lionel died of pneumonia at the Sunnyside Nursing Home, where he had lived as a child and which he had given to the hospital, on 14th February 1943. According to his Will his body was “placed in a plain coffin without fittings and cremated and my ashes strewn on the grounds of the crematorium.” (Perry Bar, Birmingham)

  In the obituary, published in the Kidderminster Shuttle on 20th February it was stated:

  Although in his 83rd year Mr Stretton had, up to his last illness, retained his robustness of physique and spirit. He was a man of strong resolve and almost fierceness of character and one who not only had the courage of his convictions but was highly self-opinionated when he made up his mind that his view of any subject under discussion was the right one. No man in Kidderminster and District has done more for his fellow members of the community in the relief of sickness and suffering than Mr Stretton.

  In a national newspaper appreciation a week after his death, Lionel’s contribution to medicine was likened to that of Joseph Lister.

• Place of Death: Kidderminster, Worcestershire
• Spouse: Lucy Emma Stretton (née Houghton)
• Marriage Date: Monday, 21 April 1884
• Father: Samuel Stretton
• Mother: Kate Stretton (née Birch)
• Sibling-1: William Richard Stretton
• Sibling-2: Ernest Samuel Stretton
• Sibling 3: Kate Mary Stretton
• Sibling 4: Edward Alfred Stretton
• Sibling 5: Unnamed twin
• Sibling 6: Unnamed twin
• Sibling 7: Gertrude Rosa Stretton
• Sibling 8: Harry Weston Stretton
• Sibling 9: Robert Bertram Stretton
• Sibling 10: Francis Byrche Stretton
• Sibling 11: Hubert Arthur Stretton
• Sibling 12: Sidney Sturges Stretton
• Sibling 13: Archibald Callendar Stretton
• Sibling 14: Philip Cecil Braddyll Stretton
• Child 1: Rosa Marguerite Stretton
• Child 2: Samuel Houghton Stretton
• Child 3: John Weston Stretton