Walter Barham Foley was born at Bridgwater, Somerset, on 18 September 1889, the eldest of six sons of Robert and Sarah Foley. He was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, 1901-1907, distinguishing himself in athletics and shooting. He entered St Thomas's Hospital in 1907 having gained an entrance science scholarship and he later was awarded the William Tite Scholarship. He qualified MB BS in 1912. After 18 months house appointments he became medical officer to a construction company engaged in building the Zambesi River railway. On the outbreak of war he returned to England and joined the RAMC, being first attached to a casualty clearing station on the Somme, from which he was shortly transferred to Macedonia. Here he was concerned in the organisation of hospitals in the wake of the devastation left by the retreating Bulgars. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and on return to Britain in 1918 he was appointed OBE. He returned to St Thomas's Hospital in 1918 and joined Rowley Bristow's orthopaedic unit and after two years as the first house surgeon to the department he became assistant surgeon. In 1922 he passed his FRCS and in 1927 he was appointed assistant orthopaedic surgeon at the Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford, where he joined G R Girdlestone. He also held appointments at the Radcliffe Infirmary, the Royal Bucks Hospital, Aylesbury and the King Edward VII Hospital, Windsor. He played a major part in the development of the clinic system at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. All his inclinations were towards the clinical practice of orthopaedics rather than to research although he was a pioneer in this country of osteotomy of the neck of femur for the correction of deformity in severe slipping of the upper femoral epiphysis. In 1946 he was elected President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine and after his retirement he was made an honorary member of the section. He was also elected an emeritus Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. A quiet, unassuming and invariably courteous man, he was an excellent teacher who based his teaching on profound common sense and personal example. In 1919 he married Miss Phoebe Hickling and they had two daughters. She died in 1947. In 1955 he married Mrs Margery Miller, his secretary for many years. He was a keen golfer, enthusiastic ballroom dancer, an accomplished watercolourist and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He died on 9 June 1979.