Francis William Shepherd, who was born in Nottingham on 6 December 1906, grew up in Castletown, Isle of Man. With a London BSc he studied medicine at Cambridge and St Bartholomew's Hospital. After holding posts in Hampstead and Ilford he was appointed RSO at Huddersfield in 1938 and, it is said, served there with great devotion throughout the war years becoming in 1947 honorary assistant surgeon and in 1948 consultant in general surgery. He was at one time President of the Huddersfield Medical Society and was also active in BMA affairs. He devoted himself to the care of his parents and it was only after both of them had died that he married Mary Hyde, a childhood friend from the Isle of Man, but she died suddenly very soon after they retired to a converted farmhouse near Douglas. He died on 21 August 1978, aged 71 years.