Born 7 April 1866, the son of John Hayward, MRCS 1845, of Rushall, Wilts, who died on 19 November 1869, aged 45. His mother, née Fuller, was the daughter of the Steward of St Bartholomew's Hospital and died not long after her husband. He was educated at Marlborough College and St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he won the Brackenbury scholarship in medicine, and served as house physician. He was house surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and assistant physician to the East London Hospital for Children, Shadwell. Hayward had taken the London MD the year after his qualification, and proceeded to the surgical Fellowship fourteen years later; after a further twenty years he took the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians. He had for many years one of the best general practices in the prosperous suburb of Wimbledon. During the war of 1914-18 he served in the RAMC, with the rank of captain, gazetted 25 March 1915.
After his retirement in 1935 to Eynsham, near Oxford, he wrote an excellent popular history of medicine. Later he moved to Wilton, Wiltshire, where he died on 12 March 1949, aged 83, and was buried at Beechingstoke, near Devizes. He left a legacy of £300 to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College. Hayward married on 4 February 1901 Rosamond Grace, daughter of George Rolleston, FRS, professor of anatomy at Oxford, and sister of Sir Humphry Rolleston, Hon FRCS. Mrs Hayward was a grand-daughter of Dr John Davy, brother of Sir Humphry Davy, PRS, Hon MRCS, the famous scientist. She was one of the first well-educated women to train as a nurse at St Bartholomew's Hospital. Mrs Hayward survived her husband, with two sons and two daughters; the younger son, John Davy Hayward, is a distinguished literary critic. Mrs Hayward died at Wilton on 1 October 1950. Hayward, from time to time, presented books to the College Library.

(The Royal College of Surgeons, Plarr's Lives of the Fellows, July 2, 2013)