Hugh Ashby was born at Manchester, the son of H. Ashby, F.R.C.P, and his wife Helen, daughter of Rev. Francis Edward Tuke of Borden, Kent. He was educated at Clifton College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating as B.A. in 1904. He qualified at Manchester in 1907 and obtained resident posts at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Children’s Hospital. He then went abroad to study at Marburg in Germany and at New York, Boston and Philadelphia. He returned to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where, following in his father’s footsteps, he was elected to the staff in 1912. It and the Salford Royal Hospital, which appointed him assistant physician in the same year, retained his active support till his death. He was also pathologist to the Manchester Consumption Hospital early in his career, and lecturer on diseases of children at the University in later life. He was the author of a book on Infant Mortality (1915), of which a second edition appeared in 1922, and with C. Roberts edited the sixth edition (1922) of H. Ashby and C. A. Wright’s Diseases of Children, Medical and Surgical. In 1949 he was elected to the presidency of the British Paediatric Association, of which he was a founder member. Ashby had a deep understanding of his young patients and unusual insight into the problems of children’s diseases. Nutritional disorders were one of his particular interests. Although physically handicapped throughout life, he played golf and tennis and was a keen yachtsman. He left a son and two daughters by his wife, a niece of Sir G. Elliot Smith, F.R.C.P. He died at his home in Didsbury.
G H Brown
[Lancet, 1952; B.M.J., 1952; Times, 10 Oct. 1952; Al.Cantab., I, 80]