William Augustus Maybury was born in London in 1846; his father was an Irishman, also called William Augustus, who had qualified as a doctor in London, and entered general practice, first in the City of London, and later he moved out to a country practice in the village of Frimley, in Surrey. Maybury trained at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, where in 1868 he gained a certificate as teacher of science; this was accompanied by a prize in Preliminary Medical Science. With such qualifications he might well have been able to work as a demonstrator in the medical school at St Thomas's. Maybury qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons two years later, before going on to Queen's University in Belfast where he gained a Doctorate in Medicine, and the further qualifications of Master of Surgery, and a Licentiate of Medicine, so he was indeed very well qualified. On returning to England, Dr Maybury took a job as a House Surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital before moving to Newark in Nottinghamshire where he spent a year as the resident Medical Officer and Hospital Secretary.
Dr Maybury came to Colchester in 1876, going into general practice at 9 West Stockwell Street, where he was based until his death nearly fifty years later. I think it is distinctly possible that Dr Maybury bought his practice from a certain Dr Edward Williams MD, who is shown in Kelly's Directory for Essex as being in practice in West Stockwell Street from 1850 until around the time Dr Maybury arrived, but I am still working on that one. In addition to his general practice work Dr Maybury was a surgeon to the Colchester police force and the Medical Officer for two of the districts of the Colchester Poor Law Union; this meant that he would have been responsible for the health care of the inmates of Colchester's old Workhouses, one of which became St Mary's Hospital. Dr Maybury also served as President of the Colchester Medical Society from 1910 to 1913. Although shown in the Medical Directory as being in practice until the time of his death in 1924, it seems likely that Dr Maybury sold his practice to Dr Charnock after the latter had been discharged from the army in 1921. Supporting evidence for this was the existence of a number of old National Insurance records with Dr Maybury's name on them which came with the West Stockwell Street patient records, when the practice premises were merged into 3 East Hill in 1963.
Dr Maybury never married and was looked after by a succession of resident housekeepers. He died from carcinoma of the colon in August 1924, and was survived by his eldest sister Lucretia, who like William, had never married, and who still lived at the old family house in Frimley, The balance of his estate was a little over £18,000, quite a lot of money for those days, and this was shared between his sister Lucretia and a Dr Lysander Maybury, who was possibly a nephew, and who may have been responsible for erecting the original plaque.