Born on 14 August 1921 at Northampton; his father was a leather factor, but his great-uncle Henry Briggs FRCS, was the first Professor of Midwifery in the University of Liverpool, and his mother's brother Hugh Reid FRCS, was surgeon to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary. James's younger brother Donald Knowles Briggs, MD Cambridge, practised as a haematologist in New York. J R Briggs was educated at Northampton Grammar School, Oakham School, and King's College Hospital Medical School, winning school and college scholarships. He graduated in the University of London in 1943 and took the Conjoint Diplomas the same year. He was immediately commissioned a Surgeon-Lieutenant, Royal Navy, and saw active service in the North Sea and the Atlantic, and later in support of the Italian and Burma campaigns; finally he was posted to a naval hospital in Ceylon. After demobilisation in 1945 he remained on the reserve of officers in the rank of Surgeon-Commander RNR, and was awarded the Volunteer Reserve Decoration in 1959. Briggs made postgraduate studies under E P Stibbe FRCS, and Ian Aird FRCS, and was house surgeon to Sir Clement Price Thomas in the Chest Unit at Horton Hospital, Epsom. He took the Fellowship in 1952, and was registrar in the orthopaedic department at Guy's Hospital till he became orthopaedic surgeon in 1960 to the Mid-Sussex Hospitals Group, working chiefly at Cuckfield Hospital for the rest of his career; from 1969 he was in addition consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the Brighton and Lewes Hospitals Group. He was secretary of the South-East Metropolitan Orthopaedic Club, with whom he had visited clinics throughout Britain and the Continent. He was much concerned with social problems, and took a deep interest in the welfare of his patients and junior colleagues; he was chairman of the Cuckfield Social Club; his favourite recreation was sailing. Briggs married Christina Wildina Jacoba Willink, widow of Rudolph Van Stolk; her grandfather and some of her uncles were surgeons. He was killed in a car accident in Belgium on 19 December 1971 aged fifty, while driving with his wife to spend Christmas with her parents at their home in Holland. She was severely injured in the crash, but recovered and survived him with their son Dr R S J Briggs and their daughter.