Dr. Ivor Back

Born: 31 August 1879.

Died: 13 June 1951.

Crowley described Ivor Back him as a “great surgeon, and true gentleman. . . . Handsome as a god, with yet a spice of devil’s laughter lurking there, he would sit and enjoy the treasures of the conversation, adding at the proper interval his own rich quota of scholarly jest.”  When he met Crowley he was doing his clinical training at St. George’s Hospital.

 Back was one of Crowley’s few Paris acquaintances with whom he continued a friendship after returning to England, dedicating In Residence: The Don's Guide to Cambridge to him. He and Gerald Kelly are also responsible for numerous improvements in the preface to Alice, an Adultery. In addition, Ivor Back edited the first three volumes of Crowley's Collected Works, "supplying learned notes to divers obscure passages."

He was also an avid Mason—whether he joined before or after meeting Crowley is unclear; he would go on to reach a high grade in Freemasonry and eventually be Past Master of the Lanesborough Lodge. His wide range of interests—including literature, criminology, and fly-fishing—earned him a reputation as a superb after-dinner speaker.

Ivor Back was born 31 August 1879, the eldest son of Francis Formby Back of Harrow Weald, proprietor of The Egyptian Gazette. He won classical scholarships at Marlborough College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1901 with second-class honours in natural science. He distinguished himself at rowing and boxing. He took his clinical training at St George's Hospital, where he won an entrance scholarship, qualified in 1905, won the Allingham scholarship at St George's in 1906, and took the Fellowship in 1907. He was house surgeon, house physician and obstetric assistant at St George's, and was elected assistant surgeon in 1910 when Lawrence Jones, FRCS retired through bad health. Back carried on the sound methods of his immediate predecessors, Marmaduke Sheild, FRCS and Crisp English, FRCS. He won an Albert Kahn travelling fellowship in 1911, and wrote the required record of his voyage round the world, which was privately printed in 1913. During the war of 1914-18 he served in the RAMC, with the rank of captain, at the 4th London General Hospital, the 54th General Hospital in France, and as a surgical specialist at Catterick Camp, Yorkshire.

He was elected surgeon to St George's in 1918, and became consulting surgeon on his retirement in 1938, but returned to active work 1943-45 during the second war. He was appointed a governor of the hospital in 1951. Back was assistant surgeon to the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children, and surgeon (proctologist) to the Grosvenor Hospital for Women, where he developed and practised the abdominoperineal technique for cancer of the rectum introduced by W. Ernest Miles, FRCS. He also examined in surgery for Cambridge University. He was active in the affairs of the Medical Defence Union, serving on the council from 1944 and as president in 1949.

     Ivor Back married Barbara, daughter of F H O Nash of Battle, Goring, Oxfordshire, who survived him with one son, a barrister. He died on 13 June 1951, aged 71. He was a man of tall commanding presence and striking personality, and was proudly conscious of his descent, through his grandmother, from the great Duke of Wellington. He was a connoisseur of art and literature, and was deeply interested in criminology. As an expert medical witness in the courts he was absolutely imperturbable. He had considerable success as an occasional journalist, and he took high rank in Grand Lodge Freemasonry and was a past master of the Lansborough Lodge. His recreations were golf and fly-fishing. He was an excellent after-dinner speaker. His portrait in operating dress by Sir William Orpen is at the Savile Club, of which Back had been chairman. He had a large private practice in Queen Anne Street and later at 4 Park Square West, and lived at 8 Connaught Place, W2.

Publications:

Round the World and Back. Privately printed, 1913. Surgery, with A Tudor Edwards. London: Churchill, 1921. Diseases of the Salivary Glands, in Choyce's System of surgery. London, 1912; 3rd ed 1932. "Technique of Gastrojejunostomy". Lancet, 1933, 2, 802.