(1873-1944), barrister, forensic medicine

Dr. William Alfred Brend, was born in Kensington on April 29, 1873. He was educated at St. Paul's School, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and King's College, London. He took a first in the Natural Sciences Tripos in 1895, and a year later the B.Sc.Lond. with honours, taking the M.B., with honours in forensic medicine, in 1903, and the M.D. in State Medicine (with gold medal) in 1915. He received-the M.R.C.P. in 1939.

During the Second World War he served as temporary major, R.A.M.C, and was inspector of hospitals in France and Belgium for the Croix Rouge. Brend was a member of the British Psychological Society and the British Psycho-Analytic Society, and served for some time as Neurological Deputy Commissioner of Medical Services under the Ministry of Pensions; he also had charge of the special Medical Board for Functional Nervous Disorders.

Apart from his teaching post at Charing Cross Hospital he examined in forensic medicine for the Universities of London and Edinburgh, was an acthe member and at one time vice-president of the Medico-Legal Society, and wrote a Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology for the use of students and practitioners, which reached a seventh edition ten years ago. He also contributed to the Nineteenth Century, the Edinburgh Review, and to medical journals, and published in 1915 an inquiry into the statistics of deaths from violence and unnatural causes in the United Kingdom, and in 1917 a book, Health and the State. Dr. Brend served at the headquarters of the B.M.A. on the Ministry of Pensions Subcommittee, and on the subcommittee on Amendment of Coroners' Laws and Death Certification, and was vice-president of the Section of Public Medicine at the Annual Meeting held at Bath in 1925.

He died on 5th October 1944 at Charing Cross Hospital, where he had been lecturer in forensic medicine for many years.