Maurice Ellis, the son of a motor engineer, who founded a milk business which later became Associated Dairies, was born on 16 September 1905 in Leeds and was educated at Rydal School, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Leeds University School of Medicine. After qualifying in 1930 he was appointed to house posts at Leeds General Infirmary and at Barnsley. In 1933 having decided to join the Colonial Medical Service, he took the London University DTM&H and sailed for Nigeria. During his first tour of service, spent mainly in sleeping sickness control in Northern Nigeria, he became proficient in the Hausa language. Part of the second and the whole of the third tour were spent in general surgical work at Lagos. Ill health caused an early retirement from the Colonial Medical Service in 1945. After his return to the United Kingdom he worked for a year and a half in general practice, in Gainsborough. In 1948 he took the FRCS and after a surgical post at Dewsbury was transferred back to his own teaching hospital. With the inception of the National Health Service and the increased demand for casualty services he was appointed to work full-time in the casualty department. From 1949 he was senior registrar and in 1952 was made consultant. He retired in 1969. In 1967 Ellis had become founder President of the Casualty Surgeons Association, and after his retirement he campaigned vigorously for the improvement of casualty work throughout Britain. He was especially interested in tetanus and was co-founder of the tetanus unit at Leeds. He is remembered for his hard work, administrative ability, original thought, and love of teaching. Hundreds of clinical students and junior doctors referred to him affectionately as Father Ellis. In 1962 he published his *Casualty officers' handbook*, which ran to three editions in his lifetime and continued to be widely read thereafter. In 1933 he married Irene Thornley, surgical ward sister at the Leeds General Infirmary. They had one son who qualified in medicine. Ellis died on 13 October 1977, after having suffered for some years from progressive brain-stem ischaemia.