Rev. Benjamin Griffith was born on October 13, 1821, in Pennsylvania.

He was a Baptist minister. He graduated from Madison (now Colgate) University in 1846. During his studies, he served as superintendent of a Sunday school. In 1851, he became a pastor at the New Market Street Baptist Church in Philadelphia. During his pastorate, the large meeting house of the Fourth Baptist Church was built. He regarded the Sunday school work as of vital importance. Being orphaned at a young age, building and supporting orphanages was very close to his heart. He was a General Secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society from 1857 until his death in 1893.

In 1854, he married Elizabeth Lewis Bowman Crozer (1829–1916). He died on October 24, 1893, in Upland, Delaware, Pennsylvania.

Harold Randall Griffith served in the No 6. Field Ambulance and was awarded the Military Medal for bravery at Vimy Ridge. He introduced the use of ethylene (1923) and cyclopropane (1933) into Canadian anaesthetic practice. In 1941 he established the first postoperative recovery room in Canada. He and Dr. Enid Johnson, in 1942, pioneered the use of curare as an anesthetic to produce muscle relaxation, important for improving operating conditions and decreasing mortality. He organized the Society of Canadian Anaesthetists in Montreal, which in 1943 would become the Canadian Anaesthetists' Society, and was the Society's first President. He joined the Anesthesia Department of the Faculty of Medicine of McGill University as a Lecturer in 1946. He was Chairman, 1950-1956 and Professor, 1954-1956. He published over seventy medical publications.