He was educated at Amersham Hall School in Caversham, Oxfordshire, now Berkshire, and then University College, London. He was awarded a Gold Medal and Scholarship in Medicine, Surgery, and Obstetric Medicine at the Bachelor of Medicine examination and the Gold Medal in Forensic Medicine and two years later the Gold Medal at the Mississippi.
At University College Hospital he was in succession House Physician, House Surgeon, Surgical Registrar, and Demonstrator of Anatomy. He became Assistant Surgeon at Westminster Hospital and from 1877 to 1887 lectured in the hospitals Medical School. He then became Assistant Surgeon at Middlesex Hospital and Dean of the Medical School during 1886–1892.
He was President of the Medical Society of London for a two-year term beginning in 1902.
On 7 December 1910 he gave the Bradshaw Lecture to the Royal College of Surgeons of England on cancer. Pearce"s book Elements of Surgical Diagnosis was first published in 1884 and went through ten editions.
He was particularly interested in the cause and treatment of cancer. In World War I he was Major in the Territorial Force in charge of the surgical division of a Territorial General Hospital.
He became Lieutenant-Colonel in 1915.
He took charge after the 1918 Armistice until the hospital closed in 1920. He was sent to France in 1917 to report on the treatment of wounds. He was awarded Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1910 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919 for military service.
He was also a Fellow and Member of Council of University College London.
