Harold Albert Oatley received his medical education at University College Hospital, qualifying MB BS in 1936. After junior posts at University College Hospital and in the Anatomy Department at Cambridge, he worked successively at the Royal Masonic Hospital, the Miller General Hospital, Greenwich and at Lewisham Hospital before he became orthopaedic surgeon at Whipps Cross Hospital in 1944. Here he remained until he retired from hospital practice in 1974. He continued in private practice in Harley Street until 1980, when he retired to Highcliffe-on-Sea, Dorset, where he died on 12 January 1987.