Stephen de Carteret Barclay was born on 26 August 1918 in New Zealand. He qualified there and came to England after the war to specialise in surgery. He returned to New Zealand to practice in Leamington, Cambridge, where he is thought to have died sometime in 2002.

Maurice Isidore Symonds was born in Melbourne on 24 July 1920, the son of Dr H. Symonds, a general practitioner at Murrumbeena. He was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, and graduated with honours in surgery and medicine at Melbourne University. He was a house surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hosp