Henry Bedson

Henry Bedson was born on 29 September 1929 to Sir Samuel Bedson and Dorothea Annie Hoffert, He was educated at Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School, before gaining admission to the London Hospital Medical College, where his father was professor of bacteriology. He graduated in 1952 after having received the Charrington prize for anatomical dissection, a distinction in the second bachelor of medicine examination, and the prize for clinical surgery. ==Career==

After completing his junior medical and surgical posts, Bedson took up an appointment in morbid anatomy and in clinical pathology in 1953. In 1976 he was a member of the International Commission for the assessment of smallpox eradication in Pakistan and Afghanistan and of the World Health Organization informal group on monkeypox and related poxviruses viruses, in addition to the dangerous pathogens advisory group established by the Department of Health and Social Security. ==Smallpox outbreak in Birmingham (1978)==

In 1978, Bedson was head of the smallpox laboratory at Birmingham Medical School. In late August 1978, during the bank holiday weekend, Bedson was on-call when he was called by Alasdair Geddes, the region's smallpox expert, to examine fluid samples taken from blisters of Janet Parker, a photographer working above Bedson's smallpox laboratory. She had been admitted to an infectious diseases ward at the East Birmingham Hospital with an initial diagnosis of flu and drug eruption. The day after confirming the specific strain of smallpox, while in quarantine at his home in Cockthorpe Close, Harborne, he committed suicide by cutting his throat and died five days later on Wednesday 6 September. His suicide note read: '''' In Bedson's Munk's Roll biography published by the Royal College of Physicians, virologist Peter Wildy and Sir Gordon Wolstenholme wrote: The verdict in court was that Bedson was "not guilty". How Parker exactly became infected with smallpox remains unknown. ==Personal and family==

In 1961, Bedson married Ann Patricia ( Ducker; died 31 January 2019, aged 81), a Yorkshire staff nurse working in Liverpool. They had a son and two daughters: Peter, Ruth and Sarah Elizabeth. He was a close friend of virologist Keith Dumbell, and a godparent to his children. Bedson's hobbies included cricket, and dry fly fishing, an activity learnt from his childhood days with his father. He owned a holiday home in Llangynog, Wales. ==Selected publications==