Savage, George H. (George Henry), 1842-1921

Sir George Henry Savage was born on November 12, 1842, in Brighton, England, the son of William Dawson Savage, a chemist and druggist.

He was a prominent English psychiatrist. He received medical training at the Sussex County Hospital and Guy’s Hospital, winning the Treasurer’s gold medal and qualifying in 1864. He graduated from the University of London (M.B., 1865; M.D., 1867). Savage was a resident both at Guy’s and the Bethlem Royal Hospital and passed a few years in general practice at Alston Moor, Cumberland. After returning to Bethlem Hospital as Assistant Medical Officer in 1872, he succeeded to the post of Physician-Superintendent in 1878, a position he retained till 1888. Savage was also consulting physician at the Royal Institution for the Mentally Deficient, Earlswood, for twenty years and a lecturer on mental diseases at Guy’s. He examined mental pathology for London University and, as an active member of the Medico-Psychological Association, was elected to its presidency in 1886. He delivered the Lumleian Lectures at the Royal College of Physicians in 1907 and the Harveian Oration of 1909. He was co-editor of the Journal of Mental Science from 1878 until 1894. Savage was an original member of the Neurological Society and was elected president in 1897 when he spoke on heredity and neurosis. He was a prolific writer, publishing over a hundred articles in various medical journals, capitalizing on the clinical material provided by his extensive hospital experience. His most famous private patient was the novelist Virginia Woolf. Savage also published on forensic psychiatry, becoming known as an expert witness in insanity pleas. His textbook on “Insanity and Allied Neuroses” (1884) met with a favourable reception. In 1912, Savage was knighted and elected the first president of the newly formed psychiatric section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He was a sociable man of many interests, a strong supporter of medical education for women, and a keen Alpine climber, golfer, botanist, and fisherman.

In 1867, he married Margaret Walton (-1868) and in 1882, he remarried Adelaide Mary Sutton (c. 1856-). He died on July 5, 1921, in St. Marylebone, Middlesex, England.