Harold Brayshaw was born in Johannesburg on 1 February 1896. His father, Edmund, was a mining director and his mother's maiden name was Harriette Williamson. Harold was educated at St John's College, Johannesburg and at the South African College, Cape Town, where he studied for two years. During the first world war he was not accepted for active service in South Africa, so he came to Edinburgh where he graduated in medicine in 1918; he took the English Conjoint Diploma in 1920 and the Edinburgh and English Fellowships in 1923. He worked for a time at St Peter's Urological Hospital, London, and went back to South Africa in 1925. There he became assistant to Temple Mursall at the Johannesburg General Hospital, and ultimately Head of the Urological Department. He was elected a Fellow of the International Society of Urologists in 1933, and in 1934 visited many main urological centres in the USA, spending eleven months in the States. On his retirement in 1964 he was elected by the Federal Council of the Medical Association of South Africa to be an Emeritus member of that body by virtue of his long and valuable service to the medical profession in South Africa. He married in 1934 Nancy, youngest daughter of Dr McKenzie of Durban; they had two daughters and one son. Brayshaw's chief interests outside surgery were music, fishing, golf and tennis. He died in 1972 at the age of 76.