📍Upton, West Ham, London E7, UK
1827 – 1844“I was born in April 1827 at Upton House, a large Georgian house set in about seventy acres of grounds at Upton, near West Ham, then a quiet village east of London. I was the fourth of seven children of Joseph Jackson Lister and Isabella Harris, and ours was a devout Quaker household: plain speech, plain clothes, early mornings, and a strong sense that a life should be useful. My father was a wine merchant by trade, but his passion was optics. He worked out how to make microscope lenses without the coloured haloes that spoiled the image, and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for it. He let me use his microscopes as a boy, and I spent hours examining insects, plants and anything else I could find. I dissected small animals, cleaned and assembled their skeletons, and announced while still a schoolboy that I would be a surgeon. Every morning, while he dressed, my father had one of us children read aloud to him. My mother was gentle and wise, and I was always close to her. I went to Quaker schools at Hitchin and then Grove House in Tottenham, and in 1844 I entered University College London. I went on to study germs and infection, and in 1867 I introduced antiseptic surgery, cleaning wounds and instruments with carbolic acid, which saved countless lives. My love of careful observation began with those boyhood hours with my father's microscopes at Upton.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today