Captain Herbert George Flaxman SPURRELL (1895)

Royal Army Medical Corps
Born 20 June 1877 in Eastbourne, East Sussex
Died 8 November 1918, aged 41
Commemorated on the Alexandria (Hadra) war memorial, Egypt.

Herbert Spurrell was the only son of Herbert Spurrell and Harriet Rebecca, née Blaxland, of West Norwood, London.

He was a biologist, physician and author, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, and discovered and classified fish, reptiles and frogs from the Gold Coast and South America. Among the species named after him are Spurrell's Free-tailed Bat and Spurrell's Woolly Bat.

He took his BA in 1899, and then continued his studies at the London Hospital and the London School of Tropical Medicine. He became Assistant Professor Physiology at the University of New Orleans for a year, and held medical appointments in West Africa and South America.

On his return from Colombia in 1915, Herbert was sent abroad by the Government on a secret mission, and in 1916-17 acted as Temporary Medical Officer at Obussi, South Ashanti. He was commissioned into the RAMC on 1 June 1917, and served in Egypt, where he sat on the RAF Medical Board.

He died of pneumonia contracted while on active service, at No. 19 General Hospital, Alexandria on 8 November 1918.