Koch Memorial Clock Tower

A clock tower on Kynsey Road, standing in front of the National Hospital and beside the medical faculty. Built in 1881. The plaque reads: *In memory of E. L. Koch, M.D. Principal Medical College Erected by Public Subscription and Civic Medical Officers 1881.*

Edwin Lawson Koch was born in Jaffna in 1838, qualified at the Bengal Medical College in Calcutta, took his doctorate at Aberdeen, and entered the Ceylon Medical Service in 1862 as a surgeon at the Colombo General Hospital. He was one of the first lecturers when the Colombo Medical School opened in 1870 and became its second principal in 1875. He was remembered as "a bold Surgeon, a successful Physician and an expert Obstetrician".

On 20 December 1877 he cut himself performing an autopsy and died of the infection. He was thirty-nine. His colleagues raised the money for this tower by public subscription, and the Governor gave the clock.