Keith William Powell was born in Australia in 1915 and entered St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1938. After early hospital appointments he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in the early years of the war but was invalided out in 1943 with the rank of Captain. He passed the FRCS examination later that year and worked as assistant surgeon at St Stephen's Hospital, Chelsea, for two years before going to Brighton, where he was a surgeon to Brighton General Hospital and the Royal Sussex County Hospital. He was a general surgeon with a special interest in the palliation of pain due to malignant disease and he carried out many chordotomies and hypophysectomies to achieve this. He retired from the health service in 1980 but continued to live at Shoreham until his death on 13 February 1983 aged 68, survived by his wife and their son.