St John Michael Clive Birt was a consultant general surgeon at Jersey General Hospital. He was born on 12 February 1916. His father, Amelius Cyril Birt, was a general practitioner in Wantage. His mother, Gertrude Isabel Kidd, came from a medical family: many were doctors attached to the London Hospital and her father, Joseph Kidd, had been Disraeli's personal physician. Birt was educated at Marlborough College, and then went on to St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London, which his father, uncle and a cousin had all attended. He qualified in 1939. His first post was as an orthopaedic house surgeon at St Thomas' Hospital. From 1949 to 1941 he was a house surgeon and resident surgical officer at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. In 1942 he was called up to serve in the Second World War and, despite not having the FRCS, he held surgical postings, first on a submarine depot ship and then in a training station for the Fleet Air Arm. He was demobilised in 1946. He became a surgical registrar at St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey, and, from 1947 to 1948, at St Thomas' Hospital. He then spent a year in Montreal, Canada, at Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital. Returning to the UK, in 1950 he was a senior registrar at St Peter's Hospital for Stone in Covent Garden. As Birt outlined in biographical notes given to the Royal College of Surgeons, there was strong competition for consultant posts in the aftermath of the war: 'I finished my surgical training in 1950 in common with others who had had their training delayed by the war. I went up for two surgical appointments (in) Swindon and Exeter, on each occasion I was one of over 120 applicants and got to the last four.' He decided to make 'his own explorations' and went to Jersey, outside the NHS. He was appointed as a consultant general surgeon at Jersey General Hospital in 1951, where he remained until his retirement in 1981. Here he was, as he says, '…very happy doing a wide variety of surgery and playing a part in improving the hospitals and medical facilities in general.' He was awarded an OBE in 1974. During the 1950s he was county surgeon for St John's Ambulance in Jersey. He was president of the Wessex division of the British Medical Association in 1971 and of the South Western Obstetric and Gynaecological Society in 1975. He played golf and squash (he played for St Thomas' Hospital), but particularly enjoyed sailing and boating. From 1952 to 1953 he was commodore of the Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club. In 1946 he married Mairi Araminta Cameron. She died in 1988 and in 1990 he married Daphne Isaacs. He had three children with his first wife: Michael, Nicola and Caroline. St John Michael Clive Birt died in August 2009. He was 93.