William Sharp (surgeon)

William Sharp
Born	1729
Died	17 March 1810
Occupation	Surgeon
Employer	George III
Spouse(s)	Catherine (née Barwick)

William Sharp (1729 – 17 March 1810) was an English physician reported to have acted as surgeon to King George III. With his brother Granville Sharp, he was an active supporter of the early campaign against slavery in Britain.

He commissioned a well-known painting of his extended family playing music on a barge.

The son of Thomas Sharp, Archdeacon of Northumberland, William Sharp was born in 1729. His grandfather, John Sharp, also a Church of England clergyman, had risen to become Archbishop of York, and Sharp's father was his biographer. His other grandfather was Sir George Wheler. Sharp was one of a family of thirteen children, although three of his brothers died in infancy. Sent first to a local school in Northumberland, at the age of fourteen he left his parents to go to London as a student of surgery.

In February 1755, Sharp became an assistant-surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, in the City of London, and he resigned from the hospital in 1779. He published some medical papers, including one advocating the use of paste board as a material for splinting fractured limbs, and another concerning a stone removed from the bladder of "the Rev. Mr. T. C." His medical appointment book for 1784-1785 survives.

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