thumb|upright=0.9|Plaque in Birmingham in honor of [[Sampson Gamgee.
Surgical dressing
Gamgee Tissue has a thick layer of absorbent cotton wool between two layers of absorbent gauze. based in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, since 1911.
Tolkien
In Birmingham, "Gamgee" became the colloquial name for cotton wool, which led to the surname of Gaffer Gamgee and his son Sam in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. In a 1954 letter to the author Naomi Mitchison, who was checking<!--not mere proofreading--> the text of the novel for Tolkien, he addresses a question she had about the name: