John Wilks was a consultant general surgeon at Bolton. He was born in London on 18 October 1918, the son of Charles Edward and Sybil Wilks. He was educated at Newcastle Preparatory School and Tonbridge School, where he gained an entrance scholarship, the Judd leaving exhibition and the Kitchener scholarship. He began his studies at Guy's Medical School in 1936 and qualified in 1942. He held house posts at Guy's, and then joined a Friends Ambulance Unit in China. He returned to Guy's as a demonstrator in anatomy. From 1950 to 1951 he was a registrar at Lambeth. He was then a registrar at St Mark's and a senior registrar at the Royal Northern and Great Ormond Street hospitals, and then at the Royal Free and North Middlesex. In 1961 he was appointed as a general surgeon at Bolton Hospital, with a special interest in children's surgery. He retired in 1983. In 1946 he married Doris Wu. They had a daughter and a son.