Doris O'Doherty was born on 7 April 1902, the elder of two daughters of Charles Patrick O'Doherty, the assistant secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and of Blanche Mary Clark. After education at the Mary Thatcher Girls' School in Camberwell she secured a St Dunstan's Science Exhibition in 1919, and entered the London School of Medicine for Women at the Royal Free Hospital where she won the surgery prize and was house surgeon to Clement E Shattock and Lionel Norbury. After a house physician appointment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children at Hackney, and further resident jobs, she passed the FRCS in 1935. She was appointed honorary surgeon to the Carshalton War Memorial Hospital in 1936 and remained there until her retirement in 1967. She married C J Chapman in 1945 and they had no children. Her husband predeceased her and she died, aged 77, on 3 March 1980.