Ormsby, Sir Lambert Hepenstal (1849–1923), surgeon, was born 19 July 1849 at Onehunga Lodge, Auckland, New Zealand, the only son among five children of George Owen Ormsby (1814–61), civil engineer, and Selina Ormsby (née Hepenstal) (d. 1901), daughter of Revd Lambert Watson Hepenstal, of Altadore, Delgany, Co. Wicklow. His paternal grandfather, Owen Ormsby, was a clergyman in Ballymascanlon, Co. Louth; his father was an early emigrant to New Zealand in 1844, where he became deputy surveyor-general to the colony. Lambert Ormsby was educated at the Commercial School and the Lyceum in Auckland, and the Grammar School, Parnell. A daring and adventurous boy, he embarked for London at age 15 intending to join the Royal Navy. Dissuaded from this ambition by seasickness and other severities of the lengthy voyage, he continued his education at the Royal School, Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, till 1866, when he was apprenticed by his family in Ireland to George Porter (qv), of the Meath hospital, Dublin, one of the leading surgeons in the city. Studying at both the Meath (where he was surgical resident pupil) and the RCSI, and applying the ‘energy, perseverance, and determination’ that he adopted as a lifelong motto, within three years, at age 19, he qualified as both a surgeon and physician. He intended joining the army medical service, but accepted a post as demonstrator in anatomy in the RCSI. Attracting large classes with the fluency and pragmatism of his teaching, and also highly successful as an examination grinder, he enjoyed a considerable income, and in 1870 took a house at 4 Lower Mount St., where he resided with medical pupils whose studies he supervised. Elected surgeon to the Meath hospital (January 1872), he occupied the post for fifty-one years (1872–1923), throughout which he was a dominating figure on the hospital's medical board, with his outspoken opinions and force of character. On his election he moved to a larger house at 12 Lower Fitzwilliam St.
Satisfying a nagging ambition to attain a university education, he entered TCD, combining his studies there with his surgical duties and teaching; he took bachelor's degrees in arts and medicine (1875), and was awarded an MD for a thesis on anaesthesia (1879). He also became by examination a fellow of the RCSI (1875). He invented in 1877 a pocket ether inhaler which became widely used in anaesthesia worldwide. Taking a special interest in childhood diseases and orthopaedic surgery, he established the National Orthopaedic and Children's Hospital in two rooms at 7 Upper Kevin St. (1876), and remained with the institution as senior surgeon after its reconstitution as the National Children's Hospital, at 87–8 Harcourt St. (1887); his energetic promotion of the hospital over many years kept him in the public eye. In 1880 he resigned from his various teaching commitments; moving to 4 Merrion Sq. West (latterly renumbered as 92 Merrion Sq.), he concentrated exclusively on his expanding surgical practice. A strenuous advocate of skilled hospital nursing, Ormsby was instrumental in effecting, after prolonged controversy with the governing committee and incumbent nursing matron, a reform of nursing standards at the Meath. He was the chief founder (1885) of the Dublin Red Cross Nursing Sisters' Home and Training School for Nurses; restricting admission to ‘ladies by birth’, and attracting well educated women into nursing, the school supplied both the Meath and the children's hospital with nurse probationers, and fully trained and qualified nurses. Ormsby's drive and self-importance did not endear him to some colleagues; when in May 1894 he was censured by the RCSI council on charges of advertising, he retaliated by counter-charging his accuser with having issued dubious certificates of incapacity. The censure was lifted the following year after Ormsby's written apology. Ormsby served two years as president of the RCSI (1902–4); later in his career he was the college's honorary secretary (1921), and its representative on the General Medical Council. Highly critical of the condition of the Royal Naval Medical Service, especially the poor status and conditions of service of naval surgeons, he urged a boycott of the service by his students; despite the notoriety attached to his protests, they helped bring about significant reforms. Appointed honorary consulting surgeon to the New Zealand expeditionary force during the first world war, he visited France and Flanders to observe the condition of ambulance transport.
Ormsby wrote articles on medical topics, and published a Medical history of the Meath Hospital and County Dublin Infirmary (1888), which is most valuable for its biographical sketches of the medical staff of the nineteenth century. Knighted in 1903, he belonged to many professional organisations in Ireland and Britain (including the Royal Irish Academy of Medicine, of which he was a fellow, and the RCPI), and held various positions on the governing bodies of the medical profession in Ireland, and with medical institutions. Prominent in Dublin society and philanthropies, he founded and chaired the Association for the Housing of the Very Poor in Dublin, to administer the substantial bequest of a Miss Allingham, of whose will he was an executor; he was also a trustee of the Taylor art bequest. He married firstly (16 July 1874) Anastasia Dickinson (d. 1911), only daughter of John Dickinson, of Greenfields, Co. Dublin; they had two daughters and two sons, one of whom, Gilbert John Anthony Ormsby, served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the South African war, the first world war, and in India. He married secondly (1921) Geraldine Matthews (d. c.1950), OBE and Royal Red Cross, daughter of William Matthews of Hyères, Var, France; they had no children. After a period of declining health, he died at his residence in Dublin on 21 December 1923, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery. Portrait photographs may be found accompanying the newspaper obituary notices, and in the sources cited below by Ormsby, Lyons, and Gatenby.