Dorothy June Raeburn, née Whitney, was born on 8 July 1929 in London. She was the daughter of Herbert Edwin Whitney, an engineer, and his wife Nellie née Grisman who was a teacher. After attending Wycombe High School from 1940 to 1948, she won a state scholarship to study medicine at London University. Commencing training at Guy’s Hospital in 1948, she was in the second year of the admission of women to the course. She graduated MB, BS in 1953. After initial house jobs in obstetrics and gynaecology at Lewisham Hospital, she spent a year from 1955 to 1956 at St Helier Hospital in London, before moving to Birmingham as house surgeon and then registrar with the professorial unit of Professor McLaren. In 1960 she moved to Dundee Teaching Hospital and worked for two years as a rotating registrar in orthopaedics and chest surgery. She passed the fellowship of the college in 1961 and the following year moved back to London as senior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s Hospital and also at Southampton General. In 1967 she was appointed consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology to the Mid Sussex Hospital and stayed there for thirteen years serving on many of the hospital’s advisory committees. She moved to Gibraltar in 1981 as a locum consultant to the Royal Naval Hospital and, in 1986, was appointed consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology. Apparently this post also involved providing maternity care to the apes of Gibraltar as there was no veterinary surgeon in the colony. In 1978 she married Basil Raeburn, a medical graduate of Edinburgh University and community physician to the Cuckfield and Crawley Health District, who lived in Haywards Heath. She became stepmother to his six children one of whom was killed in India. There were seven step-grandchildren. She retired in 1990 and continued an active life in the community of the Haywards Heath area; chairing the local preservation society, the museum committee and the League of Friends of the Princess Royal Hospital. As a keen gardener, she was a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and also of the Wine Society and swam with the Dolphin Ladies Swimming Club. Reflecting on her career in later life, she commented on the difficulty she had in getting a place at medical school in 1948 when there were very few female students at Guy’s and 90% of the students were ex-servicemen. She would have preferred a more general surgical career but was advised to take up obstetrics and found that in the 1950’s, even in that specialty, she faced discrimination in her attempts to become a consultant. She died on 6 February 2019 aged 89.