Born in Natal in 1911 and educated at Guy's Hospital, where he won the Hilton Dissection Prize in 1933 and qualified through London University and the Conjoint Board in 1936. After serving as house surgeon and junior demonstrator of anatomy at Guy's, he was appointed University Demonstrator of Anato

Bertram John Bickford was a consultant surgeon in Liverpool. He was born in Tavistock, Devon, on 17 October 1913, and was to become the third generation of his family to enter medicine. His grandfather, Thomas Leaman Bickford, was a Surgeon Captain RN. His father, Bertram Raleigh Bickford, was a GP