Richard Clive Whalley, the son of Richard and of Gladys Whalley (née Grant), was born on 19 February 1931 at Haywards Heath, Sussex. After education at Hollingbury Court and Haileybury College, he entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and qualified from St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1956. He married Kristin Pool, who also studied at Bart's, a year later. He elected to do his two years of National Service in Basutoland with HM Colonial Medical Service, returning to a surgical registrar appointment at the Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital at Alton before appointment as a senior registrar in the St Thomas's Hospital rotation. He and his wife and children spent the first year of higher training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, where he made many friends. On appointment as consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Redhill and Crawley hospital group he earned an excellent reputation both for his innovation and his practical ability. Registrars on the St George's training rota especially looked forward to working with him because of his teaching ability as well as the trouble he took with them. He had a particular interest in surgery of the small joints and was a member of the Hand Society and also the Foot Society. He published papers on the use of Silastic implants for the great toe and he developed the surgical isolator for hip operations at Crawley. Whalley was a strong man with a reserved nature, whose principles and beliefs played a large part in both his professional and his close-knit family life. A member of the Anglican church of evangelical conviction, he was associated with the Gideons International movement for many years and was one of its zone trustees. His work took him to many churches, occasionally to preach, and he was a lay reader at St John's Church in Copthorne. He died in October 1982 as the result of an accident and was survived by his wife, two sons and one daughter.