Ivan Magill was born at Larne, Northern Ireland on 23 July 1888 the son of Samuel, a draper and Sara (née Whiteside). He was educated at Larne Grammar School and Queen's University, Belfast, a strong young man of "enviable physique" being a rugby forward and a heavy-weight boxer for the university.

John Edmund Riding was a distinguished anaesthetist who became dean of the Faculty of Anaesthetists at the Royal College of Surgeons and a member of the RCS Council in 1976. He grew up in Ormskirk in Lancashire and attended King George V Grammar School in Southport. It was there that he probably acq