Loris Freda Figgins was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Melbourne. She was born in Melbourne on 30 May 1927 and attended Deepdene State School and then Methodist Ladies College. During the holidays she picked peaches in Doncaster, gathered redcurrants outside Hobart and compressed Queensland maple for use in the manufacture of Mosquito bombers. She went on to study medicine at Melbourne University. As a medical student she worked as a nurse at Sunbury Mental Hospital, an experience which had a big impact on her. She had to delay her final medical school exams as she had developed chickenpox, picked up from a newborn with the infection. While waiting to finish medical school, she worked in the pathology department at the Queen Victoria Hospital. She was subsequently an intern in the Frankston orthopaedic section of the Royal Children’s Hospital, where she cared for children with chronic bone and joint disease. While at Frankston, she met one of her mentors, the surgeon John B Colquhoun. Her next position was at Austin Hospital. Here she set up a research project on the effect of anaemia in infections, observing that in extensive bone infections with associated soft tissue abscesses, drainage was often necessary to optimise the effect of antibiotics and transfusions. In 1961 she travelled to the UK. With the help of Sir James Paterson Ross, she found an appointment at Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital in Nottinghamshire. Here she treated many miners with knee and back injuries, the result of crouching in the narrow mining tunnels. Back in London, she achieved the primary fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. She then worked in general surgery at Copthorne Hospital in Shrewsbury. After three years and having passed the second part of her fellowship, she returned to Australia on a cargo ship as a ship’s doctor, arriving back in Melbourne in early 1964. She was asked to help establish a Trade Union Clinic at Footscray, Victoria, to treat and prevent employment-based injuries, and ended up staying there for nine years. After a major internal strike, the clinic was closed. She decided to start a private practice and became a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Dandenong Hospital. She left Dandenong Hospital in 1987 and retired in 1997. She wrote an autobiography *Where angels fear to tread: a pioneering female orthopaedic surgeon*. She met her husband Dave at a safety convention, where he worked as one of the safety officers. They made their home in Berwick, near the border with New South Wales. Figgins died on 29 December 2023. She was 96.