Reginald Crosbie was a general surgeon on the Wirral, Merseyside. He studied chemistry at London University, graduating with first class honours in 1949. For his medical training he moved to Liverpool and passed his MB, BCh in 1955. After house jobs at the Walton Hospital and the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, he then became a senior surgical registrar at the Royal Liverpool Hospital. In 1962 he passed the fellowship of the college and of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He retired in 2002. Various articles he wrote were published in the *British Medical Journal* and he contributed a chapter on neonatal surgery to James Moroney’s *Surgery for nurses* 9th ed (Edinburgh & London, Churchill Livingstone, 1965). He was a member of the Liverpool Medical Institution. He died in February 2018.