James McClure was born at Riccarton, Kilmarnock, on 11 March 1875. His father was master of the local school, and there James started his education, which was continued at Kilmarnock Academy where he acquired a good grounding in the classics. He did his medical course at Glasgow University where he graduated MB CM in 1896. He then spent two years as a demonstrator of anatomy, before his appointment as house surgeon to the Royal Infirmary where he came under the influence of Sir William Macewen and decided on a surgical career. After a further resident post at Middlesbrough he passed the FRCS examination in 1902 and settled in London. He started in general practice in Chelsea but was later enabled to specialize in surgery by obtaining the appointment of assistant surgeon to the National Temperance Hospital where he worked till he retired as senior surgeon at the beginning of the second world war. Yet this was not the end of his surgical career, for he worked during the war in the Emergency Medical Service outside London, and had attachments to several of the smaller hospitals in the London region till he finally gave up practice in 1949. McClure had a very large consulting practice in general surgery, being highly successful in the abdominal field, and earned a reputation for sound judgement as well as surgical skill. He was careful to keep up to date, and the attention he gave to the training of his juniors was much appreciated. He married Rita Bryce and her premature death in 1936 was a blow from which he never really recovered. He had many kind friends, but died a lonely old man at his home in Harley House on 9 December 1966.