Francis Sansome Mitchell-Heggs, the fourth child and third son of Francis Raymond Mitchell Heggs, a medical practitioner, and of Maud (née Sansome) whose father had been surgeon to West Bromwich Hospital, was born at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, on 16 August 1911. After education at Nottingham High School, Tenterden Hall School, Hendon, and Epsom College, where he was Jenks' Scholar and Anne Hood Exhibitioner, he went to St Thomas's Hospital Medical School. On qualifying in 1934 he was casualty officer and house surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital and later recorded his indebtedess to Sir Percy Sargent, Sir Max Page, Philip Mitchiner and William Romanis. He was next resident surgical officer at the Royal Hospital, Sheffield. During the second world war he served in the RAMC from 1939 to 1945 and became a surgical specialist. On demobilisation with the rank of Major he was appointed consultant surgeon to Bury and Rossendale Hospital Group, in the Manchester Region. He published papers on the use of tantalum gauze in the repair of incisional hernia; the chapter on hernia in Sir Henry Souttar's *Textbook of British surgery*, and also a textbook called *Instruments of surgery*. He married Thelma Clansey in 1939 and they had one son who graduated in medicine from Cambridge. His wife and son survived him when he died on 4 August 1985.