Percy Malpas was educated at Merchant Taylor's School, Crosby, and graduated in medicine at Liverpool in 1923. After resident appointments he passed the FRCS in 1926 and the ChM in 1928. He then decided to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology and was later elected FRCOG in 1937. He was appointed consultant to the Women's Hospital, Liverpool, in 1933 and thereafter did much to raise the standards of antenatal and maternity care in some of the most depressed areas of Merseyside. In 1937 he and Bennett-Jones laid the foundations of the surgical services at Whiston Hospital, and he was much in demand after the outbreak of war. Following the war he was visiting gynaecologist to the Isle of Man and also worked in the Lake District, but, at the inception of the NHS he confined his work to the Women's Hospital, the Liverpool Maternity Hospital and the hospitals in the St Helen's Group. Malpas was a past President of the North of England Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society. He wrote a book on genital prolapse and was interested in the recurrent abortion syndrome. He made a number of contributions; two notable ones were his paper on the role of the foetal suprarenal in late pregnancy, and that on the appearance of the posterior urethrovesical angle in stress incontinence in which he likened uterine fibromyomata to the knots in wood and not true neoplasms. He was a skilled and rapid operator and his humanity earned his colleagues' affection. He died on 8 April 1980, and was survived by his wife, Anna, and children, Beryl and Richard.