Crichton, Brian Dodwell (1887–1950), paediatrician and farmer, was born 2/4 August 1887 at Carrowgarry, Beltra, Co. Sligo, second son (and second child among three sons and one daughter) of Alexander Joseph Crichton (1861–1934), landowner, supporter of the co-operative movement, JP, and high sheriff of Co. Sligo (1892), and Olga Bestujeff Crichton (née Bieneman). His great-grandfather Sir Alexander Crichton (1763–1856), English born and bred, pioneered changes in the treatment of people with intellectual disabilities, was physician to Alexander I of Russia, and helped in the reorganisation of the medical services in St Petersburg.
Brian Crichton was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, England, and TCD, graduating BA, MB, BAO (1912), and MD (1916) (Dubl.). He served as captain in the RAMC in Egypt during the first world war and subsequently in India. After demobilisation he established a practice in Greystones, Co. Wicklow (1921–4), but decided to specialise in paediatrics, and studied at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and in Vienna. Returning to Ireland, he established a consultant practice and was one of Dublin's first paediatricians. In ‘Infant mortality in Dublin’ (Ir. Jn. Med. Sc., no. 42 (July 1925), 302–5), he argued that Dublin's relatively high infant mortality rates were due to poverty and ignorance and called for child welfare centres to be established in the Rotunda and Coombe hospitals, Dublin. Attached to the National Children's Hospital, Harcourt St., Dublin, he was appointed paediatrician to the Coombe Hospital (1925–32) – later becoming member of the board of governors – and was the first paediatrician appointed to the Rotunda Hospital (1927–33), where an infant ward was established and infant mortality rates declined as a result of specialised care. He designed a flexible infant cot for ease of examination, and published The infant: a handbook for students and nurses (1930).
In 1933 he returned to Carrowgarry to manage the family seat, and combined medical practice with farming. He was chairman for fourteen years of the Beltra Show Society, which was founded by his mother; he encouraged rural industries, exhibited horticultural products at provincial shows, ran a model dairy, where he produced a famous brand of cheese, and bred and successfully exhibited shorthorn cattle at the RDS. He died 16 August 1950 in Dublin, and was buried in Dromard church, Co. Sligo.
A man of great charm, he married (1913) Violet Isabella Jameson (d. 1960) of the distilling family; they had two sons and two daughters. Their eldest son died as a baby; their second son Alexander Cochrane (b. 1918) held many positions, including the governorship of the Bank of Ireland, and was managing director and chairman of John Jameson & Son Ltd. Brian Crichton's younger brother, Eric Crichton (1888–1961), served in the first world war as a captain in the RAMC and became professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Cape Town University, South Africa.