Nigel Frederick Brayley was a consultant in the accident and emergency department at Colchester General Hospital. He was born in Clifton, Bristol, on 12 April 1949, the son of Cyril Wedlake Brayley, a tobacco machinery manager at Imperial Tobacco, and Rosalie Mary Brayley née Scobie, the daughter of an insurance clerk. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Bristol Cathedral School and went on to study medicine at the Royal Free School of Medicine in London. He joined the Royal Navy in 1971 and qualified in 1973. He was a house physician at west Norfolk and King’s Lynn and held posts at the Royal Naval hospitals in Gosport and Plymouth. He was a surgical specialist with the rank of surgeon lieutenant commander. During the ‘Cod War’ with Iceland in 1976 he served on *HMS Dundas*. He was a registrar in orthopaedics at the Royal Free and in Windsor, and then a registrar in the accident and emergency department of Gloucester Royal Hospital. He went on to a senior registrar post in accident and emergency medicine in Oxford. He was then appointed to his consultant post in Colchester. At Colchester he was also a part-time clinical lead for the NHS Information Authority and a part-time honorary senior lecturer at Essex University. He was a fellow of the Faculty of Accident and Emergency Medicine. Outside medicine he enjoyed sailing, swimming, camping, touring and gardening. In 1973 he married Myra Moran, a nurse. They had a daughter and a son. Brayley died on 6 December 2018 in France. He was 69.