Born in Victoria in 1888 and had a brilliant career both at school and at Melbourne University, where he took honours throughout the course of his medical education. He then held house appointments at the General and Children's Hospitals, Melbourne. Proceeding to England he took his Fellowship while acting as Senior House Surgeon at St Peter's Hospital for Stone. He enlisted the day war was declared and joined the RAMC as Temporary Lieutenant on August 16th, 1914, and in France was for some months on duty with the 31st Heavy Battery. Later he was transferred to the Base Hospital as operating surgeon for cerebral cases, and was making observations on this subject when he developed paratyphoid fever, and so far recovered as to be invalided to England, whence he returned to his post in France as soon as possible and was hard at work when he died suddenly on November 9th, 1915, the cause of death - cerebral vascular trouble - being possibly a sequela of the paratyphoid. He had been promoted Captain in the previous August. Fairley is described as an excellent athlete and an enthusiast in art and music, and, above all, thorough and scientific in his surgical work, which he loved. His portrait accompanies his biography in the *Lancet* and also appears in the *St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal*, and his name figures in the Roll of Honour of the Royal College of Surgeons (*Calendar*, 1919).