Francis Joselin Jauch was born in Hampstead on 17 February 1897, the son of Alexander Karl Sigismund Jauch, an importer and exporter of toiletries, and his wife Elise, née Waibel. After early education at the school which later became the Marylebone Grammar School, his dental studies were interrupted in 1916 by army service, where his experiences in a hospital in France influenced him to become a surgeon instead. His early surgical training was in London at the Middlesex Hospital, where he gained an entrance scholarship, the Royal Free, and the London Hospital, where he worked with Sampson Handley, Cecil Joll, Russell Howard and Sir James Walton. He also held posts at the Universities of Zurich and Berne. In 1930 he became a part-time consultant surgeon at Grantham Hospital, working in general practice as well. During the second world war he ran both the surgical ward and his practice single-handedly, a time of immensely hard work. In 1948 he was appointed a full-time consultant at the hospital, and subsequently became heavily involved in hospital and BMA committee work. In the process he successfully resisted the threatened closure of his hospital and nurses' school. To prove that he had won the battle he himself designed the hospital's coat-of-arms. In retirement he carried on in a part-time casualty post and also in a country general practice, retiring from the former at 80 and the latter some years later. He loved his garden and was interested in trees, ornithology, ecology and the preservation of architecture. He was survived by his wife Irma (whom he had married in 1929), five children (one a doctor), twelve grandchildren (one a doctor) and three great grandchildren. He died on 1 February 1991, aged 93.