Crampton, Sir Philip (1777–1858), surgeon, was born 7 June 1777 in William St., Dublin, one of three sons of John Crampton, a prominent and wealthy dentist, who later lived in Merrion Square, and Anne Crampton (née Verner) from Co. Armagh. He is reputed to have been, as a teenager, friendly with Theobald Wolfe Tone (qv). Crampton was indentured to a Dublin surgeon in 1792, and trained in the College of Surgeons and in the Meath Hospital. He was briefly an army surgeon from 1798, and was assistant surgeon to the Longford militia at the fighting in Castlebar that year. In September 1798 he received the letters testimonial of the Royal College of Surgeons and was appointed surgeon to the Meath Hospital. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1800.
Both in his lifelong career in the Meath and in his private medical school behind his house in Dawson St. (the first in Dublin), Crampton helped establish the system of bedside teaching of medicine for which Dublin became famous in the nineteenth century. He was also a popular and successful surgeon, famous for saving the life of a choking man in a restaurant by opening his windpipe, and is said to have been able, even in old age, to swim across Lough Bray in the Dublin mountains, ride into the city, and amputate a limb, all before breakfast. He introduced lithiotrity to Dublin in the 1830s, successfully modified surgical instruments, and wrote a number of medical papers. He was involved with attempts to secure a water supply for Dublin, was elected first president of the Dublin Zoological Society, and obtained the land in the Phoenix Park on which Dublin Zoo was founded. His interests in comparative anatomy and in zoology are represented in several publications and honoured by his having had an avian eye muscle and an extinct reptile (a plesiosaur) named after him. He was elected in 1813 to the Royal Society. His colleagues in the Royal College of Surgeons elected him president in 1811, 1820, 1844, and 1855, and he was appointed surgeon general to the forces in Ireland in 1813. He was surgeon in ordinary to both King George IV and Queen Victoria, and was created a baronet in 1839. He was widely popular in society and was nicknamed ‘The Apollo of Dublin’ and ‘Flourishing Phil’. He died 10 June 1858 in his home at 14 Merrion Square, Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery; he had ordered that his body be encased in cement. He was commemorated by a bust placed above a drinking fountain at the intersection of College Street and Great Brunswick (later Pearse) Street.
He married (12 May 1802) Selina, daughter of Patrick Cannon, an army officer. She died as a result of being accidentally burned. They had two sons: the elder was Sir John Fiennes Twisleton Crampton (qv) (d. 1886), the younger was Josiah Crampton (d. 1883), a clergyman and amateur astronomer. One of the four daughters, Selina Crampton (d. 1876), was an amateur painter. The surgeon Josiah Smyly (1804–64) was a nephew, and Philip Cecil Crampton (qv) was also a relative. Sir Philip was great-great-uncle of Edith Somerville (qv), Violet Martin (qv), and Sir Bertram Windle (qv). Edward A. Martin's Dictionary of bookplates (2003) lists several likenesses, including a bust in the Meath Hospital and an engraving in the Dublin University Magazine, xv (1841).