Trevor Sussman was the son of Abraham Percy Sussman, a furrier, and Sadie, née Shanovitch, a seamstress. He was born in London on 29 October 1927 and was educated at the Davenant Foundation School in Whitechapel. He did his pre-clinical studies at King's College and his clinical years at the Westminster, where he fenced and played soccer. After house appointments he did his National Service in the RAFVR from 1953 to 1954, and then started his training in surgery, with a particular interest in urology. It was a time when competition was intense and hordes of frustrated young surgeons were emigrating. Although he was appointed as a locum consultant on several occasions, serving as long as two years, he made the decision in 1970 to give up surgery and take up public health medicine, for which he had to study new subjects and take the FFCM and the FFPHM. In this new career he was in fact able to further the interests of surgery and surgeons-in-training in the North East Thames Region, by actively encouraging the setting up of regional groups of specialists and fostering the establishment of specialist units in the peripheral hospitals. He married a nurse, Mary Herwig, on 13 May 1962 and they had two sons, Michael, an electrical development engineer, and David, a systems analyst. He enjoyed soccer, fencing, stamp collecting and good food and wine. He is thought to have died in January or February 1994.