18/06/2026
For more than 140 years, members of the Purdon family played a remarkable role in the life of the Belfast Charitable Society, serving as medical officers, visiting physicians and committee members across generations.
The family's connection begins in our records in 1804 with a visit from Surgeon Henry Purdon. Born in County Westmeath, he joined the Army Medical Service in 1793 as a surgeon's mate and, by 1798, had become Staff Surgeon to the Province of Ulster. He later received his MD from the University of St Andrews in 1814.
His eldest son, Thomas Henry Purdon (1805–1886), was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College Dublin. During a distinguished medical career, he treated patients during the devastating cholera outbreak of 1832 and held a number of important public appointments, including Surgeon to the Belfast Fever Hospital, the Belfast Ophthalmic Hospital, the Belfast Hospital for Consumption, the Prison, and the Belfast Poor House.
Thomas Henry Purdon is also credited with performing what is believed to have been Ireland's first tracheostomy, a procedure after which the patient lived for a further 36 years.
The Purdon family's long-standing commitment to medicine and public service left a lasting mark on both Belfast and the Belfast Charitable Society.
