Bryan Donkin (physician)

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Sir Horatio Bryan Donkin FRCP (1 February 1845 – 26 July 1927) was a British doctor and criminologist. He began his career as a consultant physician and lecturer at Westminster Hospital before moving into prison work.

Born in Blackheath, he was the son of civil engineer Bryan Donkin and the grandson of another Bryan Donkin, an engineer and inventor. He studied at Blackheath Proprietary School, The Queen’s College, Oxford, and then trained at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, finishing in 1873. He held early medical posts at St Thomas’s Hospital and the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, and in 1874 joined Westminster Hospital as an assistant physician, later becoming a consultant physician, dean, and lecturer in clinical medicine. He also served as physician to the East London Hospital for Children and lectured at the London School of Medicine for Women. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1880 and earned an MD from Oxford in 1893.

In 1898 he was appointed commissioner of prisons and director of convict prisons, resigning his hospital posts. He served on the Royal Commission on Control of the Feeble-Minded (1904–1908) and, after leaving the prison service, became medical adviser to the Prison Commission. He was interested in the psychology of crime and tended to see prisoners as patients. He delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 1910 on “Inheritance of Mental Characters.”

Donkin was knighted in 1911 by King George V, receiving the title of Knight Bachelor on 23 February. He was a prominent member of the Savile Club, a rationalist, and worked with Ray Lankester to expose spiritualists. He was friends with Karl Marx and treated Marx, his wife Jenny von Westphalen, and their daughter Eleanor Marx. Donkin died in London on 26 July 1927.