Portrait of Victor Bonney Md, Frcs, 1872 -1953, English School 20th Century

oil on canvas,

size: 19.00 x 17.00 ins (49 x 43 cm.)

signed and further inscribed on the reverse "Victor Bonney 1929"

Bonney was born in West London in 1872: both his father and his paternal grandfather were family doctors. Bonney, son and the grandson of doctors, was brought up in Victorian days in a tall house in Chelsea. It had a well-wooded back garden in which he and his brothers could play. His parents were artistic and there was a procession of singers and musicians coming through the house performing. He was at first educated at home and did not go to Miss Parker's Day School until he was nine. Influenced by the careers of his father and grandfather, Victor Bonney had always wanted to go into medicine. He took the Cambridge Local Examination in 1887 and passed with First Class honours. In 1891, he started medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School; he enjoyed a few months there but transferred to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School very soon. This was a hospital renowned for a consultant staff serving the Royal Household and providing Presidents for the Royal Colleges. He worked his way through the medical school until the finals where he passed the Conjoint Examination in Obstetrics and Surgery easily but failed in Medicine. He realised that he had to settle down and started to work. He tied facts together logically so that he did not have to remember isolated events but looked for trends that linked them together. In 1896 he passed Medicine with Distinction and went on to take the London MB in all parts and again he gained Distinction. He became a house physician but fell foul of the great Sir Douglas Powell for two reasons. Firstly, he often saw and treated patients before his superior had arrived at his weekly visit; secondly, his notes were brief, containing only the relevant facts. His superiors were also to some extent unhappy about Bonney's popularity as a teacher of students and so when he applied to become a Senior House Officer at the Brompton Hospital he was unsuccessful for his two previous chiefs had blackballed him. He applied back at the Middlesex for a medical post but again was not supported.

It was probably a chance meeting with the great gynaecologist Sir John Bland Sutton in the corridor of the Middlesex that led to Bonney taking up a career in gynaecology. Sir John enquired about his old student's career and, on hearing the story, he is alleged to have said 'We want a House Surgeon at Chelsea, the job is vacant. I will see you get it if you apply'. This is a little different from the processes doctors have to go through to get into jobs these days. A resident's post at Chelsea Hospital was followed by one at Queen Charlotte's and he then returned a year later to be a Registrar at Chelsea Hospital. He became Outpatient Gynaecologist in 1903 to that hospital and a Registrar in the subject at the Middlesex. In 1905, he married Annie Appleyard, a Tasmanian nurse who was a sister at Chelsea Hospital. He met her, wooed her and married her but sadly within two years of this marriage Annie had menorrhagia severe enough to drop her haemoglobin critically. After much consideration it was agreed that she should have a hysterectomy at the Middlesex Hospital. This was done and a single fibroid was found at the fundus. It was the end of the Bonney's hopes of a family and Victor always remembered this. It turned his mind towards conservative surgery for benign conditions of the uterus and ovary and influenced his whole career.