John McFarland was a consultant surgeon in Liverpool. He was born on 17 September 1930 in Rodney Street, Liverpool, into a well-established medical family. His father, Bryan McFarland, was professor of orthopaedics at the city's university; his mother, Ethel McFarland née Ashton, was also a doctor.

Born on 18 July 1900, the son of John William and Eileen MacFarland from Northern Ireland, he spent nearly the whole of his life in Liverpool and was educated at Wallasey Grammar School and Liverpool University where he qualified in 1922. From 1922 to 1925 he held a series of resident appointments a

'Mannie' Lunz was born in Benoni on 4 May 1924. He was educated at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg and studied medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, qualifying in 1946. After junior posts at Johannesburg General Hospital he went to England to study orthopaedics under Professor Brian Mc

Henry Milsom was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 30 September 1919. His father, Edwin Henry Britton Milsom, was also a surgeon who had trained at Guy's. Mary Lavinia, née Nelson, his mother, was the daughter of Charles Moseley Nelson, a Church of England canon and the granddaughter of James Coates