Harold Bolton was an orthopaedic and hand surgeon in Manchester and Stockport. He was born in Blackpool on 15 August 1918. His father, Alexander Black Bolton, was the managing director of a confectionary company; his mother, Nina Bolton née Houldsworth, was also a director of the company. He attended Hutton Grammar School and then King Edward VII School in Lytham St Annes, and went on to study medicine at Manchester Medical School. He gained a BSc in anatomy and physiology in 1939 and qualified in July 1942 with the Butterworth medical prize and the John Henry Agnew prize in children’s diseases. He was a house surgeon at Manchester Royal Infirmary to Sir Harry Platt. From 1942 to 1946 he served in the RAMC, in India, Burma and Palestine. He left the Army with the rank of acting lieutenant colonel. Following his demobilisation, he returned to Manchester as a registrar at the Royal Infirmary. He gained his FRCS in 1948 and from 1948 to 1951 was a senior registrar at the Royal Infirmary under Platt, David Griffiths and John Charnley. He then spent a year as a surgical fellow in Chicago working with Sumner L Koch. In 1952, he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon to the north Manchester group of hospitals. Two years later, he became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon for the Stockport and Buxton group. In 1960, he established the Manchester region hand surgery centre at the Devonshire Royal Hospital in Buxton. In June 1967, he dealt with casualties from the Stockport air crash, when an aeroplane carrying holidaymakers from Mallorca to Manchester airport crashed into an area close to the Stockport town centre. He was a consultant hand surgeon in Stockport and Buxton from 1980 to 1985, when he retired from the NHS. He carried on in private practice until 1987 and as a member of the Medical Appeals Tribunal until 1991. He was president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand in 1983. He was a council member of the British Orthopaedic Association and a fellow of Manchester Medical Society. At university he played tennis, fives and hockey. He later enjoyed fishing and golf, and was president of Romiley Golf Club in 1983. In 1949, he married Barbara. They had two sons – Martin Alexander and Robert Andrew. Harold Bolton died on 10 December 2015. He was 97.