Roderick Charles Baillie was born in Hackney on 23 October 1925, the son of Charles John Baillie and Emily Rose, née Welton, a seamstress. He won a scholarship to the Grocers' Company School (later the Hackney Downs School). In 1944 he joined the RNVR where he served in minesweepers in the Mediterranean and reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Executive branch. On leaving the Navy in 1947 he entered University College Hospital, where he won a gold medal in anatomy and qualified in 1952. He did house jobs at Great Ormand Street, Birmingham Accident Hospital, the West Middlesex and Gravesend Hospitals, before returning to be a registrar at University College Hospital and senior registrar in Kingston. He was appointed consultant surgeon to the Livingstone Hospital in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, a hospital for non-whites. There he gained great experience with the treatment of carcinoma of the bronchus and set up a head and neck clinic at the Provincial Hospital, which was for whites only. In those day of apartheid he caused a sensation by insisting that his clinic should be available for all races. On returning to the United Kingdom he was appointed to Llanelli Hospital where he quickly became active in the planning and building of the new hospital, always attending meetings in a safari suit, whatever the weather. Ill health forced him to retire before the building was complete. His many outside interests included painting, snorkelling, model-making, gardening and cooking, for which he underwent *cordon bleu* training. He was married twice, firstly to Margaret Rosemary McAfee, a psychologist, who died in 1954 and afterwards to Joan Wareham, a librarian. He died on 31 January 1996.