Frederick William Markham Pratt was born in 1898 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the eldest son of a well known general practitioner, Dr E F Pratt. He went to Shrewsbury School and Durham University, coming to St George's Hospital to complete his medical course and qualifying with the Conjoint Diploma in 1921. At St George's he won the Benjamin Brodie Prize in 1921 and the Brackenbury Prize in 1922, and held several junior surgical appointments there leading to the FRCS in 1926. In 1933 Pratt took the MS Durham, and was appointed surgeon to Paddington Green Children's Hospital to which he devoted the greater part of his time and effort till his premature retirement owing to ill-health in 1961. In 1935 he joined the staff of the Willesden General Hospital, and his clinical work at both these hospitals was general surgery in the broadest sense. Though a skilful surgeon, he was a quiet, unassuming person who left little record of the great number of successful surgical cases which stood to his credit. When he retired to Pewsey, in Wiltshire he benefited greatly from the quiet life of the country and the opportunity of indulging in gardening and photography, embarking on a photographic catalogue of all the Wiltshire parish churches. When he died in his sleep on 29 November 1965 he was survived by his devoted wife, and three children, two of whom joined the nursing profession.