Edward Holmes Rainey was born at Paignton on 5 April 1886 and educated at Bedford School and the London Hospital, qualifying with the Conjoint Diploma in 1909. He was house surgeon to Russell Howard and in 1913 took the FRCS. He then settled in general practice at Eastbourne, Sussex, but soon volunteered for war service, which he spent in the hospital ship Mauretania in East Africa and the Dardanelles. The last year of the war he served on the western front and was badly gassed. He was twice mentioned in dispatches and was awarded the Order of St Sava by the King of Serbia. Back at Eastbourne he built up a large practice and for 20 years was surgeon on the staff of the Princess Alice Hospital. In 1938 he became a rural practitioner in Norfolk and for the next 20 years worked there in partnership with his wife. During the second world war he was medical officer to the local Home Guard, and following enemy bombing at Norwich he converted part of his Georgian house into a nursing home. In retirement he was busy in his garden and active as President of the Harleston branch of the British Legion. He was also a lay reader. Edward Rainey had a long and busy life, devoted to his profession and his patients. In 1911 he married Irene Parsons and they had five daughters and one son who is in general practice. In 1938 he married Helen Ruth Goodman MD. He died on 8 December 1974, he was 88 years of age.