Sir William Bentley Purchase (31 December 1890 – 27 September 1961) was a British physician and barrister. He pursued a career in medical examination and served, from 1930 to 1958, as the coroner with jurisdiction over much of London. He is best known for his role in the development of Operation Mincemeat, a deception operation during the Second World War. Biography Bentley Purchase's father, Sir William Henry Purchase of Luton, was a successful importer of straw goods such as hats. The family had means to enroll young Bentley in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he pursued the liberal arts. Graduating from Cambridge in 1911, Purchase studied law and entered medical studies at the London Hospital, graduating in 1914. Bentley was commissioned as a medical officer in the Royal Artillery on the Western Front in 1914-18, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1917. Upon the coming of peacetime Purchase continued his career pathway and resumed his interrupted legal and medical studies, becoming a barrister in the Inner Temple in 1919 and a Bachelor in Medicine in 1921. He was now qualified to serve as a coroner with jurisdiction over cases that required the presence of a medical examiner. He worked two part-time jobs in the 1920s, as a lawyer and as a deputy coroner within East London. During this period he married Beryl Chapman, with whom he had two children, Roger and Jane. In 1930, upon the retirement of the coroner Sir Walter Schröder, Bentley Purchase won appointment as a full-fledged coroner. His jurisdiction shifted over different neighborhoods within London, but always included the broad area of dense population from the City of Westminster on the southwest to Islington toward the northeast. Purchase served as an official coroner within London from 1930 until 1958, winding down in that year by moving his office from London to Ipswich. Purchase served in office as the Ipswich coroner until his death in 1961, which occurred by mishap. Attempting to repair his television antenna, the lawyer-physician tumbled from the roof of his private home. He was aged 70. Significant cases As coroner, Purchase held approximately 20,000 inquests into deaths that, in his medico-legal judgement, deserved formal inquiry. In cases where the cause of death was unknown or where inquiries were required to assist the police, Purchase worked closely with specialists in forensic pathology such as Bernard Spilsbury and Keith Simpson. Murder cases inquired into