Henry Anstey Cookson

Dr Henry Anstey Cookson CBE FRSE FRCSE FRCPE (1886-1949) was a British pathologist and bacteriologist. He was Director of the Pathological Laboratories for NE England.

He was born on 1 July 1886 in Eastbourne in Sussex to Major Henry Cookson and his wife Alice Mary Anstey. He attended Clifton College in Bristol and then studied Medicine and Chemistry at Edinburgh University graduating MB ChB in 1910. He then undertook a doctorate in Public Health at Cambridge University.

In the First World War he served at the 1st Eastern General Hospital and was promoted to Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France. He later transferred to the London Ambulance Regiment and was demobilised in January 1919.

In 1923 he moved from Cheltenham to County Durham to take on the role of Consulting Pathologist for Durham County Hospital. He continued here until 1948, also taking on the role of Bacteriologist to Sunderland County Borough and Director of the Pathological Laboratories.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1941 his proposers including James Couper Brash and Alexander Murray Drennan. In 1947 he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for public services in the County of Durham.

He died in Toronto in Canada on 16 May 1949.

He married Elizabeth Georgina Mackie at Chedworth in October 1915 just prior to leaving Britain to serve in the war. They lived at Westwood in Cheltenham.

They had two sons: Thomas Anstey Cookson (b.1917) and Brian Anstey Cookson (b.1922).