James Syme [father of Lucy] was born in 1799. In 1833, after the resignation of James Russell, he took the Chair of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh University and became Junior Assistant Surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He held these posts until 1848 when he was appointed Professor of Clinical Surgery at University College London, but he returned to Edinburgh and was reinstated that same year after finding that he was expected to also carry the Chair of Systematic Surgery in London. In 1868 due to the adverse sanitary conditions in the High School Yards site, he argued for the building of a new Royal Infirmary. Syme died in 1870.