Born on 20 July 1907, William Henry Graham Jessop was educated at Almondsbury Grammar School, Huddersfield, and King's College, Cambridge, where he gained his BA in Natural Sciences in 1928. He did his clinical studies at University College Hospital, graduating MRCS LRCP in 1931, and later the Cambridge MB BChir in 1933. He became the Harker Smith cancer registrar and radium officer at University College Hospital and then, in 1939, when the staff of UCH were evacuated at the outbreak of war, he became senior assistant to the surgical unit at the Welsh National School of Medicine until 1942, and later surgeon in charge of the Morriston Hospital, Swansea, from 1942 to 1947, where he was in charge of 60 beds with only one junior resident surgical officer. He then moved to Bournemouth and became consultant surgeon to the East Dorset group of hospitals (1947-1967). It was said that he enlivened many a long operating session with his wit and that a theatre superintendent made a note for her nurses: 'Never be afraid to ask Mr Jessop a question. You can ask Mr Jessop anything.' He was a Hunterian Professor in 1940 and 1941. He married Roberta Walters and they had two sons, one, Julian Hywel Jessop, becoming a Fellow of the College. William Jessop died on 22 May 1993 in Bournemouth, survived by his wife and family, and his brother Edmund, a community physician.