David Baumber was a consultant surgeon in Bury. Born in 1942, he was educated at King's College Hospital, where he qualified in 1965 and was house surgeon and house physician. Specialising in surgery, he was a registrar at Sheffield Royal Infirmary before being appointed to Bury. In the year of his death from cancer he was much troubled by a patient who claimed that he had failed to diagnose cancer in his wife. There was a High Court settlement, but it caused him endless distress; he resigned and died later in the same month, on 31 December 1998, survived by his wife, Pam, and family.