Search Results for seddon

First Title value, for Searching Seddon, Joshua (1798 - 1862)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-12-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003200-E003299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375473375473
Occupation General surgeon
Details Received his medical education at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals. He was at one time Surgeon to the North Staffordshire Infirmary. He practised at Longdon, Rugeley, Staffordshire, and died on May 10th, 1862. Publications: "Case of Exostosis of the Tibia - Operation."- *Prov Med Jour*, 1847, 70. "Retroversion of Uterus at Sixth Month of Pregnancy." - *Ibid*, 1848, 205.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003290
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Seddon, Allen (1889 - 1958)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-06-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005400-E005499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377584377584
Occupation Military surgeon
Details Born on 14 May 1889 he received his medical education in Liverpool and at the London Hospital. On joining the IMS as a Lieutenant on 26 July 1913, he obtained the first Montefiore Prize and Medal in Military Surgery at the Royal Army Medical College in London in 1913. He served as regimental medical officer with the Gurkha Rifles from 1915 until 1917 being gazetted Captain on 30 March 1915, and was then in charge of the surgical division of a general hospital in Palestine, being mentioned in dispatches in the Gazette of 12 January 1920. He was promoted Major on 26 January 1925 and retired in that rank on 8 March 1928. From 1940 to 1949 he was medical superintendent of Coventry Municipal General Hospital. He died in 1958.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005401
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Hopkins, John Seddon (1930 - 2019)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2020-08-12
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009700-E009799
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details John Seddon Hopkins was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon in Nottinghamshire, at King’s Mill, Newark General and Harlow Wood Orthopaedic hospitals. He was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, on 4 March 1930. His father, Allan Hopkins, was a general surgeon, general practitioner and hospital medical superintendent of Westland Hospital in Hokitika on the South Island, who was a classmate and close friend of the pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe. His mother was Adeline Mary Hopkins née Oates, a housewife and part-time dance teacher. Following his father’s death from diphtheria the year after Hopkins was born, his mother returned with him to her hometown of Huddersfield in Yorkshire. He attended Huddersfield College (a grammar school) and later Epsom College on an entrance scholarship. He excelled academically at school and at sports; whilst at Epsom College he became the Surrey County junior boxing champion. He won a scholarship to study medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital medical school, where he won prizes for physiology and anatomy and qualified in 1953. After house posts at Barts, he carried out his National Service from August 1954 to December 1956 as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He spent a brief period at the British Military Hospital at Trieste, Italy and was then a medical officer in the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in Germany, Scotland and Korea. He was also recalled for the Suez Emergency. In 1957 he was a house surgeon in general surgery at the North Middlesex Hospital in London. He was then a house surgeon and locum registrar at Birmingham Accident Hospital from January to July 1958. He subsequently returned to London, as a registrar in chest surgery at the London Chest Hospital from 1958 to 1959, and a surgical registrar at the Royal Masonic Hospital from 1959 to 1960. In 1961, he was a registrar in general and ENT surgery at Mount Vernon Hospital, then a registrar in general surgeon at Lewisham General Hospital, from 1961 to 1962. He was subsequently a registrar in orthopaedic surgery at St Bartholomew’s Hospital for a year and then at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry. From 1966 to 1967 he was a senior registrar in orthopaedic surgery for the Leeds region, at Bradford Royal Infirmary and Leeds General Infirmary. In 1965 he was a temporary consultant at the General Hospital in Birmingham for five months. In 1967 he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon to the Central Nottinghamshire Health District, including Mansfield General Hospital and Harlow Wood Orthopaedic Hospital. He was also a clinical tutor at Nottingham University and a tutor for the Royal College of Surgeons of England. At Harlow Wood he developed a special interest in bone tumour surgery and treatment. He was chairman of the medical staff committee (central Nottinghamshire) and a member of the district management committee. He was president of the Mansfield Medical Society and of the Nottinghamshire Medico Legal Society. After his retirement in 1993 he moved to Buckinghamshire to be nearer his children and grandchildren. Outside medicine he loved to garden, visit places of historical interest and travel. Hopkins died on 22 November 2019 at the age of 89. He was survived by his wife Carmel (née McEvoy), a nurse and midwife he had married in 1960, and their five children, twins Caroline and Louise, Michael, and twins Christopher Neil and Rosalind Diana.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009781
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Seddon, Sir Herbert John (1903 - 1977)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-03-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006900-E006999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379107379107
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Herbert John Seddon was born on 13 July 1903 in Derby, the elder son of John Seddon, who worked in the Union Cold Storage Company, and of Ellen (née Thornton). He spent his childhood in Manchester and was educated at the William Hulme Grammar School from whence he entered St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College. He qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1925 and graduated in 1928 with honours and the University Gold Medal, passing his Final Fellowship in the same year. His first house surgeon appointment was with Sir Holburt Waring and Harold Wilson; he was then orthopaedic house surgeon with Reginald Elmslie. In 1930 he was appointed instructor in surgery to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He there met Mary Lytle, an art graduate, whom he married at Marquette in the following year. Seddon returned home with his newly-wed wife to take up the appointment of resident surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, in succession to John Barnett who had been the first to hold that post. There he spent eight pioneering years, developing the comparatively new hospital and the workshops for training cripples in various trades. Most of the patients were children suffering from bone and joint infections, but poliomyelitis was a growing problem of epidemic proportion in the summer of 1938. It was during this pre-war period at Stanmore that he made valuable contributions on the nature of Pott's paraplegia. In 1939 he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Oxford. There he undertook his work on peripheral nerve injuries which came to be accepted worldwide. The war years were very lonely for him as his wife and two children had been sent to the USA for the duration, but, fortunately, his parents were able to live with him at that time. He also became heavily concerned with epidemic poliomyelitis in Malta and Mauritius, making valuable observations on the mode of infection and developing a technique for simple splint design and manufacture. Initially a Fellow, he became an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford, in 1966. The Institute of Orthopaedics in London had been created in 1946; two years later Seddon became director of studies and subsequently the first Professor of Orthopaedics in the University of London. He was now able to develop laboratories where he could convince others of the value of basic research, possibly his greatest contribution to surgery, and to exercise his prowess in postgraduate teaching, but his shrewd and active mind was inevitably harnessed to other activities as well. He became a member of the Medical Research Council for four years and was a member of the Advisory Medical Council of the Colonial Office, leading to extensive tours of Africa for which he was appointed CMG in 1951. He was awarded the Robert Jones Medal and gave the Robert Jones lecture in 1960, and he was honorary secretary and later President of the British Orthopaedic Association. He received the accolade of Knight Bachelor in 1964. On retirement from the Institute his many years of scrupulous assessment and recording gave birth to a brilliant monograph, *The surgical disorders of the peripheral nerves*. He also planned and implemented the Medical Research Council's investigation into tuberculosis of the vertebral column. This most valuable piece of clinical research was carried out at centres in Bulawayo, Hong Kong, Korea and South Africa. For his advisory work to the Lebanese Army, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Cedar of Lebanon. His published work numbered more than one hundred papers, mainly on tuberculosis, poliomyelitis and peripheral nerve injuries. In addition to his own book on the peripheral nerves he also wrote one on Pott's paraplegia with D W Griffiths and R Roaf. Outside his surgical work he had many other interests. He was a keen climber in his younger days, an enthusiasm which he transmitted to his daughter who married a member of an Everest team. He was a keen gardener, and expert photographer and, comparatively late in life, he took to oil painting at which he evinced considerable ability. He also dedicated himself to his duties as a lay reader in the Church of England at St John's, Stanmore, where he organised a Lent programme of speakers and gave many excellent sermons. Though outwardly serious he could be the centre of wit at a dinner party. He died on 21 December 1977 in Edgware General Hospital, after a short illness; he was survived by his wife Mary, and by his son and daughter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006924
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Phillips, Robert Sneddon (1932 - 2017)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Charles Galasko
Publication Date 2017-03-16 2018-06-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009300-E009399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381507381507
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Robbie Phillips was an orthopaedic surgeon in Manchester, a proud Scotsman, an excellent surgeon and a first-rate sportsman who gave to his specialty and community. He was born on 15 September 1932 in Edinburgh to William James Phillips, a master plumber, and Mary Phillips née Sneddon. He attended Balgreen Primary School and then obtained a scholarship to George Heriot's School. He entered Edinburgh University in 1950 to study medicine and qualified in 1956. From 1957 to 1959, he served as a surgeon lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. His pre-registration jobs were at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and Western General Hospital. In 1959, he was a senior house officer at Western General Hospital and then a surgical registrar at the same hospital. There he met Jimmy Scott, the first consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Western General, who called all the surgical registrars together and asked if anyone would like to volunteer to become the first trainee orthopaedic surgeon. Never one to resist a challenge, recognising that orthopaedics was in its infancy, that the specialty offered much to patients and that he would take on a lot of responsibility as the first trainee, Robbie embraced the opportunity. After all, he had come into medicine to help others and this would allow him to do just that. From 1962 to 1963, he spent 14 months as a research fellow at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, where he researched the changes in venous blood pressure around arthritic joints at a time when osteotomy was in general use for patients with painful arthritic joints, with some preferring the Judet hemiarthroplasty or Smith-Petersen cup arthroplasty for arthritis of the hip. He was accompanied by his wife and daughter. Although the Americans wanted him to stay, he decided to return to the UK and completed his training as an orthopaedic registrar at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry and as a senior registrar at the United Manchester Hospitals and North Manchester Hospitals Group. In 1967, he was appointed as a consultant to the North Manchester Group of Hospitals, amongst the first in Manchester to be recognised for orthopaedic senior registrar training. He immediately became involved in teaching and administration, in addition to a heavy clinical commitment. At the time, there were four hospitals in the group - Ancoats Hospital, where much of orthopaedic practice was carried out, the Jewish Hospital, North Manchester General Hospital and Booth Hall Children's' Hospital. With the closure of Ancoats and the Jewish Hospital, much reorganisation of orthopaedic practice was required and Robbie played his part. At the time orthopaedics was developing rapidly, especially with Charnley's development of hip replacement surgery at nearby Wrightington Hospital. Robbie recognised the potential of such surgery to relieve pain and restore mobility, and as a new consultant introduced hip replacement to patients in north Manchester. He subsequently did the same with knee arthroplasty, as well as helping run the paediatric orthopaedic service at Booth Hall. He was made an honorary lecturer by the Victoria University of Manchester because of his teaching qualities and served as chairman of the trauma and orthopaedic subcommittee of the Regional Health Authority from 1985 to 1992, at a time when clinicians were able to influence regional policy. He was an orthopaedic adviser to the Royal College of Surgeons from 1989 to 1992, and was made an FRCS *ad eundem* in 1991. He was an excellent chairman and had the ability to involve all without being intimidating; he made sure there was always a lot of laughter. He retired from the NHS in 1992, but continued in his medico-legal practice for a few years. He was always regarded by his colleagues as 'honest and fair' and his opinion as a medical expert was always respected. He loved sport and excelled at cricket, which he played until he was 50. His hands showed the consequences of decades of wicket keeping. He played in the Central Lancashire Cricket League, just below minor counties level. He was a keen golfer, but did not reach the same level. He was captain of his golf club and president of the Cheshire Union of Golf Clubs. He was a proud Scotsman and it was always a pleasure to hear him address the haggis and spend a Burns Night in his company. He devoted time to his charitable work, helping raise money to establish the Oakwood Leonard Cheshire Home and chaired its management committee for a decade. He was a Rotarian. He was survived by his wife, Ella, who met him whilst she was still at school and he was a first-year medical student, his daughter, Gillian, an ophthalmic surgeon, his son, Graeme, an antique furniture restorer, and two grandchildren. He will be remembered as a man of charity, giving of his time and energy to worthy causes, as well as an excellent orthopaedic surgeon whose abiding passions were his family, cricket and golf.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009324
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Hurley, Dennis William Hamilton ( - 1978)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-12-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006500-E006599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378779378779
Occupation General surgeon
Details Very little is known about Dennis William Hamilton Hurley except that he passed the FRCS in 1956 and was working at the Seddon Memorial Hospital, Gore, New Zealand, at the time of his death, thought to be in 1978.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006596
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Hulbert, Kenneth Frederick (1912 - 2003)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-09-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000000-E000099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372267372267
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Ken Hulbert was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Dartford, Sydenham Children’s Hospital and Chailey Heritage Hospital. He was born on 24 December 1912, the son of a Methodist minister, and was educated at Kingswood School, Bath. He went on to Middlesex Hospital to study medicine. His special interest was in paediatric orthopaedics, especially in improving the quality of life of those affected by spina bifida. He maintained close links with Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, having been a senior registrar there. Although, because of a speech impediment, he was retiring in manner, he wrote fluently and excellently, and compiled commentaries about his time as a house surgeon with Seddon at Stanmore at the outbreak of the second world war. He was married to Elizabeth and they had two daughters, Anne and Jane (who predeceased him), and a son, John, who is a urologist in Minneapolis. He died on 25 May 2003.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000080
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Tiwari, Chandra Prakash ( - 1993)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-06-12 2018-02-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007400-E007499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379654379654
Occupation General surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Chandra Tiwari was a surgeon based in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. He was born in Etawah, Uttar Pradesh, the son of Shiva Ram Tiwari, a landlord and agriculturalist, and Shushila Tiwari, the daughter of an ayurvedic practitioner. He was educated in Etawah and Kanpur and then attended Allalabad University and King George's Medical College, Lucknow. He qualified MB BS in 1951 with certificates of honour in pharmacology and ophthalmology. He gained his MS in orthopaedic surgery in 1953, graduating first in his class. He was a house surgeon in general surgery, orthopaedics and ENT surgery in Lucknow. He was then a registrar at the Irwin Hospital in Delhi. He also spent a period in the UK, where he worked with Sir Herbert John Seddon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He gained his FRCS in 1964. He wrote 12 papers in Indian medical journals. Outside medicine, he enjoyed classical music and tennis. In 1949, he married a Miss Gayathi. They had four sons, the eldest of whom followed his father into medicine. Chandra Prakash Tiwari died on 26 December 1993.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007471
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Shelswell, John Hubert (1919 - 2002)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381111381111
Occupation Hand surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Shelswell was born in Warwickshire on 19 January 1919. His father, Henry Bower Shelswell, was a hospital administrator, his mother was Lily née Johnson. He was educated at King Edward VII School, Sheffield, and Manchester Grammar School, before going on to read medicine at Manchester University. After house jobs he did a series of junior posts under A M Boyd, Sir Harry Platt and Sir John Charnley in Manchester, followed by service in the RAMC in Europe. On demobilisation he returned to complete his training in orthopaedics under Sir Herbert Seddon and J I P James at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was appointed as a consultant to the Southend General Hospital Group in 1955, where he developed a special interest in hand surgery and sports injuries. He was chairman of his hospital medical committee and of the Essex area BMA. He retired in 1984. In 1951 he married Cicely Butterworth, by whom he had a son, Robert Oliver, and daughter, Anne Elizabeth. There are five grandchildren. Formerly a keen sailor, he was a skilled photographer and gardener and, until diabetic neuropathy limited his activities, a keen golfer. He died from coronary thrombosis on 27 February 2002.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008928
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Harland, David Henry Cave (1916 - 1994)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007900-E007999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380170380170
Occupation General surgeon
Details David Harland was born in Heathfield, Sussex on 17 January 1916. His father, Percy Cave Harland, was on the staff of Barclay's Bank and his mother was Emma, née Colenutt. He attended Roborough School, Eastbourne, until he went to St Bartholomew's Hospital where he won the Hallett Prize in 1948. He held junior posts at the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, where he was influenced by L H Plewes, Sir Herbert Seddon and G R Girdlestone, and he was senior surgical registrar at Bart's and resident surgical officer at King George's Hospital, Ilford. He served in the RAMC in India and Burma from 1942 to 1947 with the rank of captain, in No 3 Mobile Neurosurgical Unit as graded surgeon. He was appointed surgeon to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital in 1956 and gained a reputation for meticulous surgery, respect for tradition and good manners. He founded the first industrial rehabilitation unit in Britain, was fundraiser for the medical centre at the hospital, President of the Herts and Beds Ileostomy Society, chairman of the Luton 100 Club and president of the friends of a church in Luton. In 1976 he was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire. He died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm and was survived by his wife, Norah, his daughter Jane, a physiotherapist, and two grandsons, Thomas and Joseph.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007987
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Lowy, Martin (1933 - 2008)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2011-12-16 2014-10-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001700-E001799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373947373947
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Martin Lowy was an orthopaedic surgeon at the Whittington Hospital, London. He was born in Aussig, Czechoslovakia, on 12 December 1933, the son of Julius Lowy, a general practitioner, and Helen Lowy née Wagner. He survived three years in a concentration camp and went to the UK at the age of 11 with his mother to join his father, who had escaped to England just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Lowy was educated at Bedford College and then Luton Grammar School. His father obtained British qualifications at the Middlesex Hospital in 1942, and Martin followed him, graduating in 1958. Martin Lowy was a house surgeon to Sir Thomas Holmes Sellors, who inspired him to take up surgery, and to Sir Herbert Seddon, who encouraged his interest in orthopaedics. After training at the Middlesex Hospital, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, Lowy was appointed as an orthopaedic surgeon to the Royal Northern Hospital in 1972 and later to the Whittington Hospital. He was a senior lecturer in orthopaedic surgery and an examiner for the final MB BS. He retired in 1996. Martin's main interest was knee surgery: he pioneered arthroscopy in England and was a founder member of the International Arthroscopy Association. He was a member of the British Association for Surgery of the Knee, and a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. Outside medicine, he was interested in skiing, cricket and rugby, and enjoyed Wagner. In 1960 he married Clara Youngday, an endocrinologist. They had two sons, Jonathan Peter and Stephen Nicholas. He died on 19 December 2008, aged 75. His wife and children survived him. Sarah Gillam
Resource Identifier RCS: E001764
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Evans, Ieuan Lynn (1927 - 2006)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-10-26 2014-06-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000200-E000299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372458372458
Occupation General surgeon
Details Lynn Evans was a consultant surgeon to the Lewisham groups of hospitals in London. He was born in Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, Wales, on 15 July 1927, the son of the Rev. Thomas John Evans and Jenny Lloyd Williams, daughter of a newspaper editor and publisher. His brother, Thomas Arwyn Evans, is also a surgeon and a Fellow of the College. Lynn was educated at Bradford Grammar School on a Nuttall scholarship, and then went on to Haverfordwest Grammar School. He studied medicine at St Mary's Hospital, where he won a prize for pathology, and, on qualifying, became house surgeon to Dickson Wright and John Goligher. He was then house surgeon to Seddon, Jackson Burrows and David Trevor at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Lynn Evans did his National Service in the RAMC, where he was new growth registrar at Millbank, a post which brought him into contact with Sir Stanford Cade. After National Service he returned to St Mary's as a senior registrar, spending a Fulbright year as a research fellow at Baylor University, Texas, under Michael De Bakey. On his return he was appointed consultant surgeon to the Lewisham group of hospitals and honorary tutor in surgery to Guy's Hospital. He practised as a general surgeon with a special interest in vascular surgery, at a time when this specialty was beginning to develop. He married in 1956 and had a son and daughter. His hobbies included skiing, book collecting and music. He died on 27 June 2006.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000271
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Butler, Richard Weedon (1902 - 1982)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

First Title value, for Searching Cholmeley, John Adye (1902 - 1995)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-07
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007800-E007899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380046380046
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Adye Cholmeley was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, on 31 October 1902, the son of Doctor Mountague Adye Cholmeley and his wife Mary Bertha Gordon, née Cumming. His uncle, William Frederick Cholmeley FRCS, was surgeon to the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton. He was educated at the Abbey School, Beckenham; Bengeo School, Hertford; St Paul's School, London (entrance scholarship) and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, where he qualified in 1926. His house posts were at Bart's. He then turned to orthopaedics, becoming assistant medical officer at Lord Mayor Treloar Hospital. In 1936 he was appointed resident assistant surgeon to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore and in 1940 medical superintendent. After the war he was appointed consultant there and at Clare Hall and Neasden Hospitals. Throughout this time he was greatly influenced by R C Elmslie, Sir Thomas Fairbank and Sir Herbert Seddon (qv *Lives* of the Fellows). He was a life member of the British Orthopaedic Association, serving on Committee from 1949 to 1950. In 1957 he served as President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. His practice was general orthopaedics but his writing was mainly centred on the hip joint. In 1985 he wrote the history of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Through his mother he was descended from James Cumming (1743-1804), agent to the Duke of Devonshire. A family tree was compiled by Mrs John Comyn, a distant relative by marriage, and reveals three medical practitioners and two surgeons among his ancestors, a remarkable genetic record. He never married, and died on 12 October 1995, aged 93.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007863
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Nangle, Edward Jocelyn (1916 - 2008)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2011-11-03 2014-08-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373689373689
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Edward Nangle was an orthopaedic surgeon in Zimbabwe. He was born Edward Jocelyn Nangle Freer in East London, South Africa on 18 March 1916 (he changed his name to 'Nangle' in 1937). His father, Cecil Charles Freer, was a dentist. His mother was Dorothy Ismay Nangle. He was educated at Plumtree School in what was then Rhodesia, and went on to study medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He qualified in 1940. He held junior posts at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, and then joined the South African Medical Corps. He served in Italy during the Second World War with the rank of major. In 1939 he had won a Beit fellowship for postgraduate training, and after the war, following his demobilisation in 1945, he went to the UK. He trained at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford, and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore under Herbert Seddon. In late 1950 he moved to Rhodesia and started in private practice. He was also an honorary orthopaedic surgeon for the government, and treated patients from the Army, Air Force and Police. He also saw welfare cases free of charge. In Salisbury he established a centre to help victims of polio. He served on many advisory boards, even after he retired in 1998. He wrote *Instruments and apparatus in orthopaedic surgery* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1951). In 1957 he was elected a fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. He was a member of the Royal Salisbury Club and the Royal Commonwealth Society. He enjoyed sailing and photography. In 1950, in England, he married Valerie Mercer Ainslow. They had five children: John Stuart, Ismay Susan, Nancy Elizabeth, Caroline Joan and Rosemary Joyce. Edward Nangle died on 20 March 2008, aged 92.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001506
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Masina, Francis (Feerose Hormasji) (1909 - 1991)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008100-E008199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380350380350
Occupation Urological surgeon Urologist
Details Francis Masina was born in Bombay on 1 February 1909, the son of Hormasji Manekji Masina, FRCS, a famous surgeon in India and the first Parsee to obtain the English FRCS. Francis was the second of four children, all of whom graduated from Cambridge University and obtained English medical qualifications. The family bought a house in Cambridge for the education of the children and Francis attended the Leys School from 1923 to 1928, where he was captain of rugby and hockey and played in the cricket XI. He passed the Natural Sciences Tripos at Emmanuel College and was awarded a Blue for hockey. He qualified at Bart's and held appointments there, at the National Hospital, University College Hospital, the Miller Hospital (under Cecil Joll) and at the Wingfield Hospital, Oxford (under Professors Seddon and Trueta). After the second world war he specialized in urology. He was the Prophit Scholar of the RCS from 1947 to 1952, based at the Middlesex, St Peter's and All Saints Hospitals, under the aegis of Sir Eric Riches, and was awarded the Jacksonian Prize in 1949 for his essay on malignant disease of the bladder. He was appointed surgeon to the Northern Hospital, Sheffield, and the Beckett Hospital, Barnsley, where he worked until his retirement. His life's work is embodied in the paper which he wrote for the *British Journal of Surgery* in 1965, entitled 'Segmental resection for tumours of the urinary bladder'. He will be remembered as a dedicated and skilled surgeon, a man of exceptional courtesy, highly intelligent and thoughtful, and with strong religious convictions and the highest ethical standards. He died on 4 March 1991 at his home in Oxford, survived by his wife Edie and by his sister, Dr Meheru Masina.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008167
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hay, Bruce Macffarlane (1913 - 1985)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-05-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007300-E007399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379501379501
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Bruce Hay was born in Auckland, New Zealand on 31 May 1913, the elder son of Douglas Baird Hay and Ethna Cherie Pierce. His father was a sharebroker and his mother was manager of the New Zealand Insurance Company. He was educated at Southwell School, Hamilton, King's College, Auckland, and Otago University, graduating in 1938. After resident appointments in Auckland, he served in the New Zealand Medical Corps in the Middle East and Italy, from 1939 to 1941 rising to the rank of Major. He was made an honorary gunner of the Sixth Field Regiment in recognition of his distinguished service in the field. He returned to New Zealand in 1945 and married Margaret, daughter of Doctor A M Ross of Auckland. They came to England in 1946 and Hay spent five years training in orthopaedic surgery at Guy's and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was assistant to David Trevor, H J Seddon and Jackson Burrows. In 1951, he was appointed to the staff of Waikato Hospital, Hamilton, and four years later, he became the first private consulting orthopaedic surgeon in Hamilton. In 1966, he became Chairman of Orthopaedics at Waikato, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. Thereafter, he was part-time medical officer to the Accident Compensation Corporation in Hamilton. He was President of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association from 1970 to 1971, a member of the Dominion Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in New Zealand from 1968 to 1976, and divisional Chairman of the BMA in Waikato in 1967. He was a Waikato Diocesan School Board governor for eleven years and a Southwell School Board trustee for thirty years. Hay was an able mediator and negotiator and a scrupulously fair chairman of many committees. His golf handicap was always in single figures and his garden was a showpiece. He died in Hamilton on 8 September 1985 after a short illness, survived by his wife, his daughter, Katherine, and his son, Tony, who is a general practitioner in Auckland.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007318
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Liddell, William Alan (1921 - 1986)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007400-E007499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379608379608
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details William Alan Liddell was born in Herbert, New Zealand, in 1921, the son of a doctor who had graduated in Edinburgh. He attended Waitaki Boys' High School before entering Otago Medical School, from which he graduated in 1945. During his student years he was awarded a blue for tennis and after qualifying took up house appointments at New Plymouth and Timaru before coming to Britain to study for the FRCS, which he obtained in 1949. While working for this examination he held a resident post at the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith where he met his wife Peggy who was being trained as a radiotherapist. He then started his orthopaedic training working at the Royal National Orthopaeduc Hospital under Professor H J Seddon, Philip Newman, Jip James and David Trevor. After his return to New Zealand he passed the FRACS in 1954 and was resident surgeon at Wellington Hospital for two years before being appointed orthopaedic surgeon to Christchurch Hospital. Although his work covered the whole of orthopaedics, his main interest was in spinal disabilities and hip surgery. Together with Bill Utley and John Cunningham the first spinal injuries unit in New Zealand was opened in the late 1950s. He was involved in the establishment of the Canterbury Paraplegic Association and worked in the disabled sporting scene as medical advisor to the paraplegic Olympics. He was elected President of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association and attended the combined meeting of the English speaking orthopaedic associations in London in 1976. At the conclusion of this meeting the presidents of the orthopaedic associations were invited to Birkhall by the Queen Mother where they were presented with a symbolic sculpture of the Tree of Andry. His main recreations were tennis and golf. In 1987 he had a heart attack which was followed by heart surgery in Auckland. Despite failing health he continued to practice until his death at Christchurch on 18 October 1986. He is survived by his wife and four children, two daughters having graduated in medicine.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007425
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Harrison, Max Henry Montague (1922 - 2015)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-02-16 2017-06-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006700-E006799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378971378971
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Max Harrison was a consultant surgeon at the General and Royal Orthopaedic hospitals, Birmingham, and the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry. He was born on 16 March 1922 in Leeds. His father, Barnard Harrison, was an insurance broker; his mother, Rebecca Harrison née Greenberg, was the daughter of a tailor. He attended Cowper Street Council School and Leeds Grammar School, and then went on to medical school at Leeds University. He gained undergraduate prizes in medicine and a scholarship for the clinical part of the course. He qualified in 1944. He held house posts at Leeds General Infirmary. He subsequently trained as an orthopaedic surgeon. He was a second professional assistant at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford, where he worked with Herbert Seddon and Joseph Trueta. He was then chief assistant in the orthopaedic department, Westminster Hospital, and a senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London. In 1958, he was appointed as a consultant surgeon in Birmingham. His ChM thesis on the blood supply of the femoral head stimulated his interest in the treatment of Perthes' disease and led to numerous publications on conditions related to hip development in childhood and a Hunterian professorship in 1976. He was a founding member of the British Orthopaedic Research Society, a member of the editorial board of *The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery* and of the executive of the British Orthopaedic Association (from 1965 to 1966), and a past president of the Naughton Dunn Club (the West Midlands' orthopaedic association). He was a founder member of the board of trustees of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. After his retirement, he continued with medico-legal work. Outside medicine, he was interested in golf and chess. In 1950, he married Valerie Abrahams. They had two daughters, Ruth and Judith, a son, Barney, eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Max Harrison died on 22 January 2015. He was 92.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006788
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Black, Lindsay John McFarlane (1914 - 2000)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008500-E008599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380686380686
Occupation General surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Lindsay Black was superintendent of the Westland Hospital, New Zealand, and orthopaedic surgeon to all the west coast hospitals on the South Island. He was born in Auckland on 20 November 1914, the third child of Wilfred Alick Black, a solicitor, and Linda née Culpan. He was educated at King's College, Auckland, where he was a successful athlete and cricketer, and studied medicine at Otago University from 1934 to 1940. He was house surgeon at Wellington Hospital and then from January 1941 to November 1944 served as a Captain in the New Zealand Army Medical Corps and the New Zealand Artillery, in New Zealand and the Pacific islands. After the war, he returned to Wellington Hospital as a house surgeon, and from 1946 to 1948 was surgical registrar at Cook Hospital, Gisborne. In 1948, he went to England to specialise in orthopaedics, one of the Kiwis who were taken under the wing of Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor. He was a registrar at Wharncliffe Hospital (attached to Sheffield Royal Infirmary) under F W Holdsworth, and later at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, under Sir Hugh Seddon and Jackson Burrows. After passing the FRCS, he returned to Hokitika, New Zealand, in 1952, and became superintendent of the Westland Hospital, and orthopaedic surgeon to all the West Coast hospitals of the South Island - Westland, Greymouth, Buller and Reefton - until their amalgamation in 1968, when he was transferred to a 'base' hospital at Greymouth. In 1958, he returned to London for a year's study leave at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. He was a member of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association. He married Grace Sorenson in 1941, by whom he had three daughters, none of whom have entered medicine. He married a second time in 1959, to a Miss Wood. His outside interests included golf, fishing and music. He died in December 2000.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008503
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Carr, Thomas Lauder (1918 - 1993)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-07
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007800-E007899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380032380032
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Thomas Lauder Carr was born in Aberdeen on 5 September 1918, the son of George Carr, a jeweller, and Agnes, née Lauder. His early education was at Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen before entering Aberdeen University for his medical studies. He qualified in 1942, and after appointments as house physician and house surgeon at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary he entered the Royal Air Force Medical Service in 1943, serving initially as medical officer in Bomber Command and later in the orthopaedic department at RAF Hospital Halton. After demobilisation in 1946 he spent a year as demonstrator of anatomy at Aberdeen University; this was followed by a year as surgical registrar and two years as orthopaedic registrar at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. He passed the FRCS in 1950 and in the following year moved to London as registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. After two years in that appointment he became clinical research assistant at the Institute of Orthopaedics and senior registrar to Sir Herbert Seddon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where he became interested in hand surgery and spina bifida. In 1954 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Aberdeen University and two years later submitted a thesis for his Mastership in Surgery degree entitled *The orthopaedic aspects of spina bifida - a study of 100 patients*. After receiving the degree the main aspects of his research were published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal. He remained at Aberdeen until 1983, and although he performed a wide range of orthopaedic procedures his main interest was in hand surgery, especially the treatment of Dupuytren's contracture. He contributed many articles to orthopaedic journals and wrote chapters in orthopaedic textbooks. He married Margaret, née Mutch, a nurse, in 1952 and there was a son and daughter of the marriage. His wife died in 1982 and he subsequently married Easter Watt, his secretary. His chief interest was hill-walking, and he was a member of the Aberdeen Crime Club. He died on 1 September 1993, survived by his second wife, his son Nicholas, and his daughter Elaine, a nurse.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007849
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Yeoman, Philip Metcalfe (1923 - 1997)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009000-E009099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381189381189
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details As a haven for severely disabled rheumatic patients, Bath presents a formidable challenge to the orthopaedic surgeon and it was there that Philip Metcalfe Yeoman excelled in the correction and mobilisation of fixed deformities. He was born into a family of Yorkshire doctors. His grandfather, William Metcalfe Yeoman, was a GP in Stokesley, and his father, also William, was a physician and rheumatologist in Harrogate. His mother was Dorothy née Young. He was born on 29 April 1923 and educated at Sedbergh, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then UCH for his clinical years. As a student he was part of the team which first entered the concentration camp at Belsen, a sight which made a profound impression upon him. It was at UCH too that he met his wife, Idonea Scarrott, whom he married immediately after qualification in 1947. House jobs were followed by a spell in the anatomy department at Cambridge and by National Service at RAF Ely. After gaining his FRCS in 1957, he took a series of junior posts at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London, with Sir Herbert Seddon, making an important study of brachial plexus injuries, which gained him the Cambridge MD and the Robert Jones medal of the British Orthopaedic Association. In 1964, he was appointed consultant to the Bath Orthopaedic Hospital and the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. There he established an efficient service that was renowned for the surgical rehabilitation of severely handicapped patients, particularly those with ankylosing spondylitis. But his patients were grateful to him for more than his surgical skill - he concerned himself with all their problems. He took a full part in the business of the British Orthopaedic Association, becoming Vice-President. He was President of the section of orthopaedics at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1983. He also served the cause of orthopaedics as both an examiner and a member of Council at the College. He retired to a delightful house in Monckton Combe, where he enjoyed gardening and golf, as well as watching the careers of his son and two daughters. He died of prostatic carcinoma on 29 November 1997.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009006
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Scales, John Tracey (1920 - 2004)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-10-19
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000100-E000199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372312372312
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Tracey Scales was a distinguished professor of biomechanical engineering at the Institute of Orthopaedics, University of London, who pioneered the use of biologically inert plastic materials in orthopaedic surgery. He was born an only child, in Colchester, on 2 July 1920. His family later moved to Stanmore, and he was educated a Haberdasher’s Aske’s School. He then went on to King’s College, London, before proceeding to Charing Cross Hospital for his clinical studies. He held junior appointments at Charing Cross Hospital and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, before spending two years in the National Service as a captain in the RAMC. He then held further junior posts in London. He managed to convince H J Seddon, director of the Institute of Orthopaedics, of the need to develop biologically inert plastic for use in orthopaedic surgery, and a department of plastics was established under his direction. In November 1954 a knee prothesis made of stainless steel and acrylic polymer was successfully used to replace the diseased joint of a 20-year-old woman, the first operation of its kind in the world. Scales went on to develop the first Stanmore total hip replacement, made in collaboration with J N Wilson. With Alan Lettin he developed replacements for the knee, elbow and shoulder. In 1974 the department became the first university department of biomedical engineering in Britain, with Scales as its first professor. He also developed porous wound dressings, and created a low air loss mattress for use in the treatment of severe burns and severe pressure sores. This work led to his appointment as honorary director of research at the RAFT Institute for Plastic Surgery at Mount Vernon Hospital, Northwood. He continued his research work at the RAFT Institute after his retirement. From 1997 to 1998 he was a visiting professor at Cranfield University. Scales contributed 175 articles to professional journals and books. He was a member of various committees and professional bodies, including the European Society of Biomechanics and the Society for Tissue Viability. In 1986 he was awarded the OBE for his work, and was made a freeman of the City of London in 1995. He died in a nursing home on 30 January 2004. His wife died in 1992. They had two daughters. He is survived by his daughters and his partner, Phyllis Hampson.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000125
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Cameron, Stuart Maxwell (1926 - 1984)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-27
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007100-E007199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379350379350
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Stuart Cameron was born on 6 December 1926, in Wellington, New Zealand. His early education was in Wellington and later at the Hutt Valley High School there. He studied medicine at Otago Medical School and graduated in 1951. After house surgeon years in Wellington and Palmerston North he joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force on a short service commission which allowed him to go overseas for post-graduate studies after a tour of duty as medical officer. While he was at Palmerston North his interest in orthopaedics was aroused by Richard Dawson, and he demonstrated his interest and clinical acumen at the Air Force Base at Wigram. There he decided on a career in orthopaedics and came to England for further experience and training. In England he held posts at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and at the Watford General Hospital to learn about the surgery of trauma. Here he came under the influence of another New Zealander, Karl Nissen, who helped many New Zealanders in their training. He then served an apprenticeship under Professor Seddon and his team in the peripheral nerve unit. This led him to a special interest in peripheral nerve and hand surgery. He took his MRCS, followed immediately by the FRCS in 1960. On returning to New Zealand he joined the orthopaedic department at Christchurch Hospital, first as a senior registrar, then as a full-time orthopaedic surgeon and finally in 1965 on the visiting staff. He remained on the North Canterbury Hospital Board till January 1976 when he decided to devote himself full-time to private practice. He was a decisive and outspoken man, quick-tempered and with a distinctive turn of phrase which did not endear him to everyone. He was, however, quick-witted and full of fun and the colleagues who knew him well admired the high standards which he demanded of himself and others. He was totally honest and would bitterly regret any unforeseen results of his impetuosity. Saddened by disappointments he gradually withdrew from public activities. He had been a notable rugby player and cricketer, and remained devoted to outdoor life with gun and rod. He became a keen forester, and planted many thousands of trees himself on his holiday property at Port Underwood. He died on 22 March 1984, after a long illness, aged 57.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007167
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bowen, Trevor Llewellyn (1932 - 1974)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006300-E006399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378508378508
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Trevor Llewellyn Bowen was born at Newport, Monmouthshire, on 12 March 1932 and attended schools in Wales before entering King's College, London, and King's College Hospital Medical School. After graduating in 1955 he undertook general resident appointments before working in the orthopaedic department at King's College Hospital. His general surgical training was at St Mary Abbot's Hospital. He took the FRCS in 1963 before continuing his orthopaedic training as a registrar and senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where he completed his studies with a temporary appointment as lecturer to the Institute of Orthopaedics. He was first assistant to Sir Herbert Seddon and registrar to Jackson Burrows. He did his national service as a Flight Lieutenant in the medical branch of the Royal Air Force, and during this time continued his interest in orthopaedics with an appointment in Norfolk as clinical assistant. In 1969 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to St James's Hospital, Balham, and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children, Carshalton, and rapidly established a reputation for hand surgery in children and adults. Shortly before his death he was appointed honorary consultant at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, where he was responsible for a hand clinic. He was also associated with the establishment and organization of the St George's and South-West Thames regional orthopaedic training scheme. With an interest in engineering he took part in establishing a medical engineering research unit at Carshalton, working extremely hard before his ambition was fulfilled with the opening of the unit in 1973. As a consultant Bowen continued and extended his interest in heraldry, particularly that connected with medical history and institutions. He gave many illustrated talks on this subject, always delivered in humorous and erudite style. Until his last few hours he was writing a book which probably would have become the classic work on medical heraldry. During the six months of his terminal illness he displayed a basic fortitude, tempered by his natural good humour, which must remain an example to all his friends and colleagues. His early death left a large gap in the ranks of orthopaedic surgeons with special interest in children and medical engineering. He married Patricia Wilks in 1955 and they had two sons and one daughter. He died on 2 July 1974, aged 42.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006325
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Heywood-Waddington, Michael Broke (1929 - 2016)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2016-07-26 2019-08-09
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009100-E009199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381347381347
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Michael Broke Heywood-Waddington was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Broomfield, Chelmsford and Black Notley hospitals, Essex. Born in Littlehampton on 24 April 1929, his father, William Broke Heywood-Waddington, was a general practitioner in Arundel and Littlehampton who had served in the Royal Navy in the First World War. His mother was Edna Madeleine Heywood-Waddington née Goddard, the daughter of a bank manager. He was educated at Dorset House, Littlehampton and Epsom College, and was awarded a major open scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge. After clinical studies at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, he qualified in 1953. After a house physician post at the Middlesex Hospital, he went to Jamaica, where he was a house officer and senior house officer under Sir John Golding. While in Jamaica he was involved in treating the survivors of polio. From 1956 to 1959 he held a short service commission as a flight lieutenant in the RAF. He was posted to Iraq, as chief medical officer at the RAF base in Habbaniya, looking after 10,000 personnel. He returned to the UK, where he was a registrar in general surgery at Mount Vernon Hospital and a registrar in orthopaedics at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, where he trained under Norman Capener. From 1962 to 1967 he was a registrar and then senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where he worked for Sir Herbert Seddon. In 1967 he was appointed to his consultant post in Essex. He organised the orthopaedic training rotation in East Anglia. He was a member of the British Orthopaedic Association, president of the orthopaedic section of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1989 to 1990 and chairman of the regional advisory committee in orthopaedics for the North East Thames Regional Health Authority. Following his retirement in 1992 he developed a busy medico-legal practice. He was a member of the MCC and orthopaedic surgeon to Essex County Cricket Club. He was also interested in skiing, photography and steam engines. He had a heart attack in his fifties, but following surgery was able to continue working until his retirement. Michael Heywood-Waddington died on 17 February 2016 at the age of 86 and was survived by his widow, Virginia Susan (née Crichton), whom he married in 1969, and their son, John.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009164
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Fitton, John Minto (1915 - 1992)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007900-E007999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380112380112
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Fitton was born in Darlington on 6 August 1915. His father, John Hall Fitton, was a bank manager in the West Riding of Yorkshire and his mother Joanna, née Fowler, was of Scottish descent. He was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, and studied medicine at the University of Leeds Medical School, qualifying with first class honours in 1939. He subsequently worked at Leeds General Infirmary under Reginald Broomhead, and then as assistant orthopaedic surgeon at Pinderfields General Hospital, Wakefield, until 1946. During this time he was surgeon in charge of rehabilitation, and director of the Ministry of Health training course for instructors in this field. In 1946 on the advice of Professor Seddon he was seconded to Mauritius, where there had been a serious epidemic of poliomyelitis. He established a hospital there, treating large numbers of patients with only a few colleagues, and for this he was awarded the MBE. On his return to England he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Dewsbury and District Hospital from 1950 to 1955, and he then took a consultant post at St James's University Hospital, Leeds, where he stayed until his retirement in 1980. He worked tirelessly with colleagues to help St James's achieve teaching hospital status, and to persuade the University to establish a chair of orthopaedic surgery. He was also a founder-member of the Holdsworth Orthopaedic Club, and co-founder of the Leeds bone tumour registry, of which he was secretary. He had many outside interests, being a Yorkshire County hockey player and later president of the Leeds Corinthians hockey club. He was an expert angler and president of the Yorkshire Fly Fisher club. A keen golfer, he also won the Moynihan cup, but his greatest interest, and one which he shared with his wife Nancy, was horticulture. He was chairman of the Northern Horticultural Society from 1987 to 1991, and he helped to expand the 'open garden' scheme in Yorkshire. His last work, completed just before he died but never published, was the draft of a book explaining the Latin nomenclature of plants. He died of bronchial carcinoma on 2 December 1992 aged 76 at Pately Bridge, near Harrogate. He was survived by his wife Nancy, née Errington, and their three children Jennifer, David and Richard, a GP in Manchester.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007929
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sharrard, William John Wells (1921 - 2001)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-12-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008900-E008999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381106381106
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John ('Harry') Sharrard was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Sheffield. He was born in Lincoln on 8 November 1921, the only survivor of a pair of twins. His father William and mother Winifred (née Wells) were both medical practitioners. His mother had been a brilliant student, winning no fewer than six gold medals. Both his brother and sister also became doctors. As a child he was small and by no means robust. His protective parents discouraged him from sports, so he turned to music, tennis and the cinema. Educated at Lincoln School, he won a King's scholarship to Westminster, where Peter Ustinov and Tony Benn were among his contemporaries. His talent for music became obvious, and he was offered a place as a professional pianist by Sidney Lipton: he had to "choose between the ivories and the bones". He decided on medicine, and went to Sheffield, qualifying in 1944. He was house surgeon to Sir Frank Holdsworth, did a year as a lecturer in anatomy, and then spent three years in the RAF, reaching the rank of Squadron Leader. He returned to be resident surgical officer at the Royal Hospital, Sheffield, to Blacow Yates, and then specialised in orthopaedics, serving as registrar and senior registrar to Sir Herbert Seddon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. During this time he researched the aftermath of poliomyelitis, working out the relationship between changes in the spinal cord and the effects on muscle in each dermatome. This won him the MD with distinction and later on the ChM with commendation from the University of Sheffield. He was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and Sheffield Children's Hospital in 1955, and was later awarded a personal chair in orthopaedics at the University of Sheffield. John Sharrard won many prizes and distinctions, both in England and abroad. In the College he was an Hunterian Professor in 1956, Arris and Gale lecturer in 1964, Robert Jones lecturer in 1983, and was elected a member of Council in 1980. He was President of the British Orthopaedic Association from 1978 to 1979, and was President and founder of the British Orthopaedic Research Society. During his time on Council he was very active in seeking improvements in surgical training, spending many hours inspecting hospitals for the training board, and cajoling his colleagues to set up proper training rotations. John married B L Petch in 1953. They had three sons and one daughter. He died on 31 March 2001.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008923
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Wynn Parry, Christopher Berkeley (1924 - 2015)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2015-03-13 2017-07-26
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006900-E006999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379140379140
Occupation Rheumatologist Specialist in performing arts medicine
Details Christopher Wynn Parry (known as 'Kit') was a rheumatologist who specialised in hand injuries and performing arts medicine. He was born on 14 October 1924 in Leeds, the son of Sir Henry Wynn Parry, a high court judge, and Shelagh Wynn Parry née Moynihan, daughter of the renowned surgeon and president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lord Berkeley Moynihan. Wynn Parry was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford and qualified in 1947. His studies were interrupted by tuberculosis, from which he made a slow recovery, and he was advised not to continue with his surgical training. Instead, he became a rheumatologist, and was heavily influenced by Sir Herbert Seddon, professor of orthopaedic surgery at Oxford, who was researching into nerve injuries and neuropathic pain. After Oxford, Wynn Parry joined the Royal Air Force and became director of rehabilitation at the combined services rehabilitation centres at Chessington and Headley Court, where he established specialist services for neuro-rehabilitation and peripheral nerve injuries, and worked closely with hand surgeons in the RAF and at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH). He was also an early researcher into the use of EMG (electromyography) as a diagnostic tool. His work was summarised in *Rehabilitation of the hand* (London, Butterworth & Co, 1958), a pioneering text. After retiring from the RAF, he established a centre for neuro-rehabilitation and peripheral nerve injuries at the RNOH, which became nationally and internationally renowned. During this period, he co-wrote *Surgical disorders of the peripheral nerves* (Edinburgh, Church Livingstone, 1998) with Rolfe Birch and George Bonney. After retiring from the NHS, he continued to work privately in rehabilitation at the Devonshire and King Edward VII's hospitals, and also developed an interest in looking after the medical needs of musicians. With Ian James, he created the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM) in 1989, a charity which provide medical advice and care to performers. In 1998, he collaborated with Ian Winspur to produce *The musician's hand: a clinician's guide* (London, Martin Dunitz), the first book of its kind in the English language. He was elected as an honorary member of the Royal College of Music in 2011, among many other national and international honours. In 1982, he was elected as president of the British Society for Surgery of the Hand, the only non-surgeon so honoured. In 1953, he married Morna Sawyer. They had three daughters and a son. Kit Wynn Parry died on 24 February 2015, aged 90. Predeceased by his wife and a daughter, his other children survived him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006957
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Clark, John Mounsten Pemberton (1906 - 1982)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006300-E006399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378540378540
Occupation General practitioner Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Mounsten Pemberton Clark was born in Leicester on 28 November 1906, the son of Edwin George Clark, a bank clerk, and Hilda Mary, née Pemberton. He was educated at North Manchester Grammar School (Preparatory) and Wellingborough School, Northants. He entered the medical school at Leeds, qualified in 1931 and soon began his orthopaedic training. Family circumstances interfered with his career and he entered general practice in Dewsbury. However, he returned to surgery in 1938 becoming orthopaedic registrar at the General Infirmary in Leeds, obtaining his FRCS in 1939. Clark joined the RAMC in 1939 becoming a Major and an orthopaedic specialist. He was evacuated from Dunkirk and later served in Malta throughout the third siege. Apart from his care of service personnel he helped with the treatment of the child victims of a poliomyelitis epidemic on the island. He subsequently served in North Africa, Italy and Austria. During his war service he was encouraged by Sir Herbert Seddon to develop his pioneering work in muscular transplantation. After the war he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon in Leeds in 1946 and established a regional poliomyelitis unit at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. He was closely associated with the development of units for tuberculosis and cerebral palsy and encouraged the development of the College of Remedial Gymnasts, and the integration of the orthopaedic nursing schools in Wakefield and Thorpe Arch. In 1947 the British Government sent him to Israel to advise on the poliomyelitis services and in 1961 the Israeli Minister of Health invited him to start a poliomyelitis unit at Zrifin. 'Pasco' Clark as he was affectionately known was a popular teacher at the General Infirmary and at St James's Hospital. He received a personal Chair in Orthopaedic Surgery and was a strong supporter of Sir Frank Holdsworth in the new concept of rotational training of registrars and encouraged his own trainees to visit other national and international centres. He wrote a classic paper during the war on pectoralis-major transplantation for brachial plexus lesions. He continued to be interested in this problem and he published a book, *Tether contractions and deformity*, four years after his retirement. In 1966 Clark married Sue Hartley who had been theatre superintendent at the orthopaedic unit at Pinderfield's Hospital. He was a shy man with great physical and mental courage. His other life interests were fell walking and classical music and his dislike of dance music did not prevent him conducting a dance band during the Malta siege. John M P Clark died at the age of 75 on February 17 1982, leaving his wife Sue. They had no children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006357
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching O'Connor, Brian Thomas (1929 - 1999)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008800-E008899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381008381008
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Brian O'Connor established the Institute of Orthopaedics at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital at Oswestry. Born in Brisbane on 27 September 1929, his father was Edward O'Connor, an engineer. His mother was Eileen Maloney, the daughter of a ship owner. He was educated at St Joseph's College, Brisbane, where he was *dux* in 1946 and a champion gymnast. At the age of 15, afraid that the war would end without him, he abandoned his studies to work on a Swedish merchant ship, but returned to graduate from the University of Queensland, where he won a Commonwealth government university scholarship. He did junior jobs in Townsville and then went to Albany, New York, as an assistant resident in orthopaedics under C J Campbell, and the following year to the Karolinska under Sten Friberg. In 1957, he went to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, to work with Sir Herbert Seddon, J I P James, K I Nissen and David Trevor. During these years he supported himself by working as a professional acrobat. This was followed by a period as senior house officer at Mount Vernon, learning the principles of plastic surgery. In 1959 he took the MCh course at Liverpool and wrote a thesis on *pes cavus* for the degree. He became senior registrar to the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and the Radcliffe Infirmary in 1960, where he took a special interest in injuries involving the chest. In 1962 he was seconded to the Sudan as senior lecturer in the University of Khartoum, in order to set up an orthopaedic and trauma service, and as civil war broke out he became adviser to the Sudanese Armed Forces, and established an artificial limb and appliance centre. During three months leave in Australia he took the MCh and FRACS examinations, and in 1965 returned to Oxford as first assistant to Robert Duthie, the Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, with honorary consultant status. In 1968 he was invited to be director of clinical studies at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, where he set about establishing an Institute of Orthopaedics, and in 1978 he became the first Robert Jones Professor of Orthopaedics at Birmingham University. In 1992 he was able to open a new sophisticated theatre complex equipped with ultra-clean air. He retired in 1994 and, since he was a collector of military antiques, was presented with an Australian naval sword by his colleagues in recognition of his combative spirit. He married Lynette Hunter, by whom he had two sons, Sean and Brian, and two daughters, Kerstin and Tamsin. He died on 21 January 1999.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008825
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Brooks, Donal Meredith (1917 - 2004)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2007-08-29 2016-09-29
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000300-E000399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372573372573
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Donal Brooks was an eminent orthopaedic surgeon in London who specialised in hand surgery. He was born in Dublin on 10 April 1917, the third son of Edward Clive Brooks, the chairman and managing director of Brooks Thomas and governor of the Royal Bank of Dublin, and Kathleen née Pollock, the daughter of a doctor and one of the first women in Ireland to be awarded a degree. His grandfather, Maurice Brooks, was a Lord Mayor of Dublin. Whilst at preparatory school in Wales Donal contracted poliomyelitis, which left him with almost complete paralysis of the left leg. He was treated by several renowned orthopaedic surgeons, including Sir Robert Jones, who inspired him to follow a career in medicine and ultimately in orthopaedics. At Repton School he was the only pupil allowed to ride a bicycle. Donal undertook his medical education at Trinity College, Dublin, qualifying in 1942 and then filled various junior posts at Dr Steevens' Hospital, Dublin, before moving to Oxford, to the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, to specialise in orthopaedics as house surgeon and research assistant to H J Seddon. When Seddon was appointed director of the newly-formed Institute of Orthopaedics at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) in 1948, Brooks accompanied him from Oxford. He had by now become Seddon's first assistant and was soon made consultant in charge of rehabilitation, and specialised in hand surgery. In 1957 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Barnet General Hospital and consultant hand surgeon at the RNOH, having worked exclusively for Seddon for 15 years: he often referred to himself as 'the last of the apprentices'. He left Barnet in 1963 on his appointment to University College Hospital and in addition held honorary appointments at King Edward VII Hospital for Officers, Chailey Heritage and St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy. He was also honorary civilian consultant to the Royal Navy and the RAF. Brooks had an extensive private practice, which included three Prime Ministers and three Kings. His international reputation resulted in many overseas honorary professorships and he published extensively on poliomyelitis and hand surgery. He served on the Court of Examiners of the College, becoming chairman, and was president of the orthopaedic section of the Royal Society of Medicine and a member of the council and of the editorial board of the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA). Early in his career he was a BOA travelling fellow to North America and worked as an exchange fellow at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm. Outside medicine his many interests included music and the ballet, but particularly motor cars, including five vintage Bentleys, one of which was a frequent sight in Harley Street. He finally retired to the house and farm he had bought in Galway, where he and his wife Stephanie née Mackworth Praed (Seddon's secretary), whom he had married in 1947, developed an extensive and beautiful garden, open to the public. Donal, an engaging and charming character, died on 24 March 2004 after a short illness, leaving Stephanie, three sons (Christopher, Rory and Seamus), three daughters (Roisin, Doon and Siobhan) and 14 grandchildren. 'I'm not a Catholic, just a careless Protestant,' was another of his memorable remarks.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000389
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Taylor, John Gibson (1918 - 2005)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-11-30
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000300-E000399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372492372492
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Gibson Taylor, known as ‘Ian’, was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He was born on 8 June 1918, three months before the end of the First World War, the only child of Scottish parents Kate and William Taylor. Ian’s father was an engineer employed at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment, Hampshire. Brought up in Fleet, Ian went to the local grammar school. Deciding on a medical career, he entered St Mary’s Hospital Medical School. Much of his time was spent at Amersham, where the medical school was evacuated during the Second World War. After a year on the house, during which time he was house physician to Sir George Pickering, he joined the RNVR. His first posting was to the destroyer HMS Zetland, which hunted U-boats. After a year he served on HMS Vindex, an escort carrier. Through many hard winters over the next four years on the treacherous North Sea, the ship escorted convoys to Russia. He was discharged as a surgeon lieutenant commander in June 1946. On demobilisation he returned to St Mary’s as a registrar to V H Ellis, the orthopaedic surgeon, who was soon joined by John Crawford Adams, with whom Ian retained a lifelong friendship. After passing the FRCS Ian became first assistant to the accident service at the John Radcliffe Hospital, being greatly influenced by Edgar Somerville, Robert Taylor and Joe Pennybacker, who taught Ian spinal surgery. In 1954 he was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Norwich, joining Ken McKee and Richard Howard. The unit served not only Norwich but was also responsible for most of the orthopaedic and trauma services in Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Ian embraced the introduction of new methods of joint replacement, holding clinics with Neil Cardoe and Gilson Wenley for rheumatoid and other arthritic problems, at first in an old workhouse, St Michael’s Hospital in Aylsham. Later a stable block was converted into an operating theatre – much of the money raised by voluntary donations from the Norfolk community. In this unlikely setting Ian performed knee and metacarpo-phalangeal joint replacements. Much sought-after as a teacher, he was involved with the rotation between Bart’s, Norwich and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, and encouraged many of his trainees to publish their first papers. In 1965 Sir Herbert Seddon asked him to help out in Nigera, where he spent several months. In 1956 he met Fodhla Burnell, an anaesthetist. They were married a year later in Norwich Cathedral. They had many shared interests – sailing in the North Sea was one, a cottage in the Perthshire hills another. He was an accomplished skier, using this method of transport to get him to hospital during the hard winter of 1979. He was a keen member of the Percivall Pott Club and regularly attended meetings of the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA). One of his last major trips abroad was to Murmansk in 2001. This commemorated the arrival of the first Russian convoy sent from the UK during the Second World War. Ian and others who had survived were welcomed by the Russians and given a medal of honour for the enormous risks taken 60 years previously. Over his last few years he developed progressive muscle disease, and died on 24 August 2005.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000305
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Manning, Charles William Stewart French (1918 - 1982)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-02-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006700-E006799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378911378911
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Charles Manning, the son of a dental surgeon, was born in Dublin on 14 August 1918. He came to England at the age of five, was educated at Sherborne School and went to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, qualifying in 1942. After serving as house surgeon to the ear, nose and throat and to the eye departments at Bart's, he joined the RAMC in 1943, serving as a Regimental Medical Officer in France, Holland and Germany. Following demobilization he was house surgeon to the orthopaedic department at the Victoria Hospital, Blackpool. After eighteen months as a casualty officer and general surgical registrar at Fulham Hospital, he returned to Blackpool as orthopaedic registrar and deputy resident medical officer and passed the Final FRCS in 1950. In May 1951 he became orthopaedic registrar with Sydney Higgs, Jackson Burrows and Derek Coltart at Bart's before moving to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, first as registrar and then senior registrar. At this stage he was awarded a European travelling fellowship by the British Orthopaedic Association. During his training at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital he worked with Sir Herbert Seddon, John Cholmeley, David Trevor, Karl Nissen and Philip Newman, and was seconded to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, Mount Vernon and the Luton and Dunstable Hospitals. In 1958 he became consultant surgeon to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, deputy Dean of the Institute of Orthopaedics, and deputy clinical director of the hospital, as well as part-time orthopaedic surgeon at Wembley Hospital. Subsequently he was appointed to the Chailey Heritage School and Hospital and, in 1964, to the orthopaedic staff at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal Marsden. Charles Manning was an excellent general orthopaedic surgeon with a special interest in the treatment of leg equalisation and scoliosis. The scoliosis unit at RNOH greatly expanded under his direction to achieve an international reputation. He was a member of council and honorary secretary of the Section of Orthopaedics at the Royal Society of Medicine. Later he served on the executive committee of the British Orthopaedic Association and was its honorary secretary in 1968-9, and vice-president in 1978. He also served on the board of the *Journal of bone and joint surgery*. He suffered a severe myocardial infarct in 1976 which shortly necessitated coronary by-pass surgery and resection of a ventricular aneurysm so that he then had to limit many of his commitments. However, he continued to serve on the Court of Examiners at the Royal College of Surgeons. He is remembered as a man of integrity, principle and charm who had a lively interest in people. After early retirement he was a keen gardener and beekeeper in Hertfordshire and bred prize cattle for a short time. When he died suddenly on 13 July 1982 he was survived by his wife, herself a doctor, and by his three daughters, one of whom qualified in medicine at Bart's. A service of thanksgiving for his life and work was held at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, West Smithfield, on 8 September, 1982.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006728
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Roper, Brian Arnold (1933 - 1993)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-01 2015-12-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008200-E008299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380447380447
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Brian Roper was born in Sheffield on New Year's Day, 1933. His father, Arnold, was a railway executive, and his mother, Nora Tuxford, was the daughter of a master cutler. He was educated at Chesterfield School and Queen's College, Oxford (where he won the Legge Prize) and on to University College Hospital for his clinical work, qualifying in 1956. After junior posts at UCH he entered the RAMC with a short service commission and became cancer registrar at the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, Millbank, where he worked closely with Sir Stanford Cade's radiotherapy department at the Westminster Hospital. On leaving the army in 1961 he held registrar posts at UCH and the Metropolitan Hospital in Islington, took the FRCS in 1963 and began to specialise in orthopaedics. He began at UCH on the orthopaedic unit, and then worked under Lipmann Kessel at the Fulham Hospital before becoming registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in 1966, subsequently becoming lecturer at the Institute of Orthopaedics in 1968. There he was much influenced by Sir Herbert Seddon. It was a time when fewer motorcycle injuries meant that there were fewer peripheral nerve lesions, and Seddon suggested to him that nobody was interested in stroke victims, and that this would be a valuable area of research to pursue, with rich opportunities to exploit his skill with tendon transfer and release. It was Seddon who encouraged him to spend a year (in 1970) as a Fellow at Rancho Los Amigos, UCLA, and there he found himself Chief of the Stroke Service. On returning to his post as lecturer he moved on to be Lloyd-Roberts' senior registrar at Great Ormond Street Hospital in May 1971, and was then appointed to the staff of the London Hospital in November 1971, at the instigation of Michael Freeman. At the London Brian Roper devoted his time to paediatric orthopaedics and joint replacement in the upper limb. Unfortunately, like his father, he developed coronary artery disease at a relatively young age and his first bypass operation was in 1984. He underwent a number of cardiac operations, always bouncing back with renewed vigour. He always intended to retire early, and did so in 1992, but was persuaded by his colleagues to stay on, part-time, to do the upper limb surgery. Unfortunately he developed another severe myocardial infarct in March 1993, and died following bypass surgery on 24 April 1993. Brian Roper was an enthusiast of association football, was honorary orthopaedic surgeon to West Ham United, attended all their home fixtures and looked after many professional footballers from all over the country. He was president of the medical students' football club. He was on the editorial board of many orthopaedic journals. A man of tremendous energy, he was a very keen sailor and commodore of the London Hospital Sailing Club, spending many happy hours at Burnham-on-Crouch. He married Jill Michael in 1957 and they had five children: one son died in a childhood accident. Of the four remaining children, Tamzin went into medicine and Sean into dentistry.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008264
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching James, John Ivor Pulsford (1913 - 2001)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-06
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380868380868
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Ivor Pulsford James, or 'Jip', as he was known to all, was a tough character who had an adventurous war in Yugoslavia, gained a reputation as a severely critical taskmaster at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and took on, as a Sassenach, the Edinburgh establishment as Professor of Orthopaedics. He was born in London on 13 October 1913. His father, Stanley Bloomfield James, had led a peripatetic life as a lumberjack in Canada, a soldier in the Spanish American War, a preacher and finally an author. His mother was Jessica née Heley. Jip, who had to finance his own education through scholarships, attended Eggars Grammar School in Alton, Hampshire, and then went on to University College, London. Having taken time out to ride his motor cycle from Cairo to the Cape in pursuit, ultimately disappointed, of his first love, he qualified from UCH in 1938. After a house surgeon post at the Royal National Orthopaedic, he returned to UCH as surgical registrar in 1941 and joined the RAMC two years later. He parachuted into the mountains of Yugoslavia and worked alongside Tito's guerrilla fighters, treating the wounded in caves and goat sheds, always on the run from the Nazi forces. His services there were recognised after the war by the award of the Golden Star of Yugoslavia. Later in Athens, he was in charge of a surgical division, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. On his return to London, he was appointed consultant at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and spent a year in the USA on a Rockefeller scholarship. It was there that he first became interested in the problems of scoliosis and of hand surgery, subjects on which he was to make important contributions in many publications. As assistant director to H J Seddon at the Institute of Orthopaedics from 1948 to 1958, he ran an excellent postgraduate training programme by giving his trainees an exceptionally hard time. In 1958, he was appointed Professor of Orthopaedics at Edinburgh University with clinical responsibilities at the Royal Infirmary and the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital. In the same year, he became secretary of the British Orthopaedic Association, taking on in the two roles a prodigious load, but soon gaining an international reputation. Once again training was a major interest, and his training programmes became a model for other specialties. He was honoured by many orthopaedic societies throughout the world, but what gave him most pleasure was being made a Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association, an exceptional accolade even for a past President. In 1968 he married Margaret Samuel, then a junior hospital doctor but later a general practitioner. They had a son, Jonathan, and a daughter, Tamsin, neither of whom saw any virtue in a medical career. He had one granddaughter. On retirement he did a spell in Kuwait, before finally settling down in a delightful Cotswold house in Slad, where he became a keen gardener. He died after a short illness on 11 July 2001.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008685
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Highet, William Bremner (1911 - 1942)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-07-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004200-E004299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376394376394
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Born at Dunedin, New Zealand, on 10 April 1911, eldest child of the six sons and one daughter of David Highet and Elsie Bremner his wife; his parents survived him. He was educated at the Musselburgh primary school and the Otago Boys High School, both at Dunedin, and took his medical training at the Otago University School of Medicine, where he won junior and senior scholarships and a university national scholarship. After serving as house surgeon at Dunedin Hospital he went as medical officer with the second Byrd expedition to the Antarctic. He next spent three months in the United States en route for England, where he served as resident orthopaedic officer at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Subsequently as resident medical officer at the Royal Cancer Hospital he studied bone tumours, and as resident surgical officer at the Princess Beatrice Hospital he inaugurated a septic-finger clinic in connexion with the fracture clinic. In December 1938 he took the Fellowship, not being previously a Member of the College, and in April 1940 was elected Nuffield scholar in orthopaedic surgery for work at the Wingfield-Morris Hospital at Headington, near Oxford. He later resigned this scholarship to become first assistant in the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and took charge of the peripheral nerve injury centre, with a special research grant from the University of Oxford. In this post he carried out some important physiological researches bearing directly upon his own pioneering clinical work. He won the Jacksonian prize in 1941 with an essay on "Injuries to peripheral nerves, with special reference to the late after results", and was a Hunterian professor elect for 1943. In 1942 he was gazetted temporary lieutenant, RAMC, and was appointed to establish the first nerve-injuries centre for the Army overseas. He was lost at sea on 7 December 1942, aged 31, while on his way to take up this post. Highet married in 1938 Joan Richards, who survived him with a daughter. Highet was a man of strong enthusiasm and initiative, who found his métier when he became attached to the research team at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Foundation. With John Zachary Young, William Holmes, and Frank Kingsley Sanders, under the direction of Professor Herbert John Seddon, FRCS, he carried out an investigation of the evils of postoperative stretching of nerves sutured after extensive resection. With Professor Seddon he studied the rate of regeneration of nerves, and he developed a technique for investigating anomalous innervation of muscles and cutaneous areas, and in particular the part played by the ulnar nerve in innervation of the thenar muscles, which cleared up difficulties encountered in cases of total median thenar loss. He investigated ischaemic lesions, which he found to be attributable to arterial spasm. He also showed his ingenuity in the devising of special splints. During these two years, when he was publishing important work almost as quickly as he produced it, Highet showed the makings of a great clinical scientist. Publications:- Splintage of peripheral nerve injuries. *Lancet*, 1942, 1, 555. Innervation and function of thenar muscles. *Lancet*, 1943, 1, 227. Procaine nerve block in investigation of peripheral nerve injuries. *J Neurol Psychiat* 1942, 5, 101-116. Traction injuries to lateral popliteal nerve and peripheral nerves after suture, with W Holmes. *Brit J Surg* 1942, 30, 212-233. The effects of stretching nerves after suture, with F K Sanders. *Ibid* 1942-3, 30, 355-369.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004211
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Osterberg, Paul Harald (1926 - 2013)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by James Nixon
Publication Date 2013-07-24 2013-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004200-E004299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376459376459
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Paul Harald Osterberg was an orthopaedic surgeon in Belfast. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 28 October 1926, but spent his early years in New York, before his father's civil engineering career took the family to Ireland. His father Harald Østerberg also served as consul general for Denmark in Ireland. His mother Ethel Østerberg née Davenport was born in New Zealand. Paul was educated at St Columba's College, Dublin. At the age of 17 he started studying civil engineering at Trinity College, Dublin, but, in 1944, three days after his 18th birthday, he volunteered for the British Army, stating he was determined to help in the fight to restore freedom to Denmark. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Buffs (the East Kent regiment) and, attached to the Royal Artillery, served in Palestine from 1944 to 1947. Following his demobilisation, he decided to study medicine and qualified from Trinity in 1953. His early postgraduate training was at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, Dublin, and later at the Royal Victoria and Musgrave Park hospitals, Belfast. Here he was influenced by Sir Ian Fraser and R J ('Jimmy') Withers. His specialist orthopaedic training took place at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital London, where he came under the influence of Sir Herbert Seddon. In 1965 he was appointed as a consultant to the Royal Victoria and Musgrave Park hospitals. He was also part of the Northern Ireland Orthopaedic Service, through which he and specialist after-care nurses provided a visiting orthopaedic service to the people of Fermanagh in the west of the province. Paul continued to provide this service up to his retirement. Throughout his consultant career he enjoyed being a generalist, and was less comfortable with increasing sub-specialisation. He was one of a small group of orthopaedic surgeons in post in Belfast at the outbreak of the civil disturbances in 1969, and he and his colleagues provided care, and developed surgical techniques to treat all patients, irrespective of their allegiances. He enjoyed the multi-professional and personal side of medicine, so evident in Ulster. He was a visiting professor at Pahlavi University, Iran, in l976, and he and his wife drove overland to take up the post. He was the founding president of the Irish Orthopaedic Association, helping to transform the Irish Orthopaedic Club into this active association that drew its membership from the whole island of Ireland. He also served on the council of the British Orthopaedic Association. A sociable and approachable man, he continued his medico-legal practice well after retirement, and his opinion was well-respected in legal circles. In 1952 he married Valerie Goodbody and they had two daughters, Lydia and Vanessa. Happily settled in Ulster, he and Valerie created a celebrated garden at the Old Manse in Hillsborough, which they continued to develop throughout their lives. He inherited his father's love of sailing and the sea, an interest that stretched back several generations (his grandfather had been in command of the Danish lighthouse service). Paul owned a series of elegant sailing boats, and continued sailing with friends in Scandinavian, Scottish and French waters to the end. Throughout their married life, and into retirement in 1989, he and Valerie loved to travel, usually by car. However, he was well-known as an erratic driver, with a tendency when talking to ignore traffic lanes and signals. He died on 25 June 2013, aged 86. Pre-deceased by Valerie, he was survived by his two daughters and four grandsons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004276
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Bowden, Ruth Elizabeth Mary (1915 - 2001)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-22
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008400-E008499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380678380678
Occupation Anatomist
Details One of the leading anatomists of her day, Ruth Bowden was born in India on 21 February 1915. Her father was a missionary, and her aunt, Edith Brown, had founded the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana, Punjab. As was usual, Ruth was sent back to England at the age of eight to be educated and to avoid the health risks. She stayed with an aunt and was brought up in a family of cousins, one of whom, Ronald Keays, who was later to become secretary of the Royal Society, fostered her interest in science. She was sent to St Paul's School for Girls, London, from which she went to the London School of Medicine for Women, at the Royal Free Hospital. After qualifying in 1940, she did house posts at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, and then went to work with Seddon in Oxford from 1942 to study peripheral nerve injuries. These experiences led to a Rockefeller fellowship to Johns Hopkins and a Hunterian Professorship in 1950. Ruth succeeded Mary Lucas-Keene as professor of anatomy at the Royal Free School of Medicine in 1951 and held that post with distinction for 30 years. She was a stimulating lecturer, keen to show how anatomical facts were related to function, and took a personal interest in each student. Among many contributions to research, those on peripheral nerve healing and the pathology of striated muscle were outstanding. She was invited to examine for the College in the conjoint and FRCS, visited eight overseas universities, was Chairman and later vice-president of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, vice-president of the Linnaean Society, the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and was WHO consultant in anatomy to the University of Khartoum. Her contributions were recognised by election to the FRCS in 1973, and her appointment as OBE. Ruth never retired. She lectured at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School from 1980 to 1983, and was appointed Sir William Collins Professor at the College in 1985, where she set about with great enthusiasm to reform the teaching of anatomy for surgeons, introducing a whole new section to illustrate the images provided by computerised tomography. Ruth was a keen supporter of the Grand Priory of the Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem, of which she was a dame and hospitaller. She was engaged in re-equipping a hospital in St Petersburg, and cajoled the surgeons she encountered in the College to give her equipment that had been replaced or had passed its sell by date. She was regularly to be seen examining the skip parked in the front drive of the College, rescuing books that had been discarded from the library. Orphan children in Poland received a big consignment of teddy bears, carefully repaired and washed by Ruth. Leprosy colonies in India were visited, and she advised on their peripheral nerve disorders. She was vice-president of Riding for the Disabled in the UK, and also advised on this in Romania. For many years she was closely involved with the pioneer hospice, St Joseph's, in Hackney. Ruth was also keenly interested in medical history, and was archivist of the collection of records of the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine. She joined the Medical Women's Federation in 1948, was national President from 1981 to 1982, and represented them on the Women's National Commission from 1984 to 1987.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008495
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Nicholson, Oliver Ross (1922 - 2013)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Peter Robertson
Publication Date 2013-11-08 2014-06-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004600-E004699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376804376804
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Ross Nicholson was the formative figure in New Zealand orthopaedic surgery through the second half of the 20th century. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 12 October 1922, Ross was educated at Auckland Grammar School, received his medical degree from the University of Otago, and trained in orthopaedic surgery in Auckland (from 1950 to 1951) and in Britain, primarily at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London (from 1955 to 1956) under the guidance of Sir Herbert Seddon. Upon his return to New Zealand, Ross took up a consultant position at Middlemore Hospital in 1957, where he remained in public practice until 1987. In parallel, he operated a very busy and successful private practice based at Mercy Hospital in central Auckland. Ross led the explosion in specialised surgical techniques that charaterised his era. He was at the forefront of Charnley hip replacement surgery in New Zealand, opening this option for reconstruction and disability relief to a whole generation of grateful patients. The national scoliosis service was both established and lead by Ross, and he was at the forefront of the management of spine trauma. Despite these special interests, Ross was a generalist, and no area of orthopaedic care was outside his sphere of expertise. In 1956 Ross was appointed as an ABC (American-British-Canadian) travelling fellow, the first New Zealander to receive this honour. He travelled extensively and interacted with the international orthopaedic community, and without doubt he was the face of New Zealand orthopaedics, being recognised and admired globally. He became president of the New Zealand Orthopaedic Association in 1982, having held every position of significance within the association before that point! This extended his international profile, and he became associated with many orthopaedic societies around the world, travelling and lecturing through the 70s, 80s and 90s. Ross was committed to academic orthopaedics, lecturing within the University of Auckland, developing the orthopaedic academic unit within the department of surgery at the university, and then establishing the chair in orthopaedic surgery. Without doubt the major contribution Ross gave New Zealand orthopaedics was his rigorous commitment to clinical excellence. He established the New Zealand orthopaedic training program and was lead examiner for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. His clinical method focused on excellence in the practice of history, examination and patient evaluation. Ross demanded very high standards, demands that some of his juniors feared, yet later were immensely grateful for during clinical practice. This commitment to clinical excellence continued throughout his career, and Ross remained a willing invitee to the final fellowship exam preparation courses through into his 80s. Outside clinical medicine, Ross was involved in almost every aspect of medical life conceivable. His participation was too great to itemise, yet ranged from hospital management to committees for government advice, from teaching appointments for medical and related students, to board memberships of multiple patient support societies and foundations, and from journal editorial board memberships through to multiple trustee and expert advisory positions. As a result of this influence upon the community, Ross received the OBE in 1976. Despite this extensive commitment to the profession, Ross was very active in the outside world. He was a passionate about New Zealand rugby, as a player in his youth and then surgeon to the Auckland Rugby Union. He was a keen participant in squash and sailing, and a devotee of the Auckland Racing Club, where he became a life member. To mark Ross' 90th birthday he was the guest at a large gathering of colleagues and friends. His own humorous and detailed review of aspects of his life was matched by many contributions that were laced with reflections of excellence, commitment, humour and candor! All of his colleagues present were able to reflect on an outstanding career focused upon the betterment of patient care and the relentless pursuit of excellence in clinical standards. Ross Nicholson died on 13 July 2013, aged 90, after a brief illness. His wife Pauline passed away in 2011; his daughter Caroline Thorburn and his two grandsons survived him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004621
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Merle d'Aubigné, Aime Robert (1900 - 1989)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-06-15
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Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007500-E007599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379684379684
Occupation General surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Aime Robert Merle d'Aubigné was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 23 July 1900, the son of Charles Merle d'Aubigné, a Protestant pastor of Huguenot descent. His paternal grandfather was a professor of theology at Geneva and an authority on the history of the Reformation. He had a strict religious education which imparted a strong sense of duty to him and was educated at the Lycée Pasteur in Paris. At the age of 18 he served in the French Army during the last months of the first world war. He subsequently received his medical training in Paris, qualifying in 1924, and was appointed resident at the University Hospital, where he won the gold medal in 1928. In 1930 he became assistant to Pierre Duval initially doing general surgery but gradually his interest in orthopaedic surgery widened, although this was still a neglected speciality at that time. His outlook however was very cosmopolitan possibly because of his Irish and Swiss grandmothers, and he became a keen traveller abroad, particularly to Austria where he visited Boehler, and to Bologna in Italy where he was influenced by Putti's work. He was appointed consultant surgeon in 1936, but was isolated from international orthopaedics by the onset of the second world war, when he served with the French Army until the collapse of France. He continued his surgery in occupied Paris and was active with the French Resistance, narrowly escaping arrest by the Gestapo in 1944. After the liberation he worked with Allied medical teams in France and was decorated for his work with the Resistance. He later travelled to England to visit American and British hospitals, and was considerably influenced by Watson-Jones, Seddon, Clark, Platt, Charnley and others. He was interested to learn of the advances in orthopaedic surgery which had taken place during the previous five years, commenting that "I learnt more every day of those two weeks than in any of the past ten years", and he determined to fill that void in France. He subsequently created the first specialised orthopaedic service in post-war France at the Hôpital Foch (a temporary military hospital) in Paris, working on problems of bone infection, nerve injuries, tendon transplantation and non-union of fractures. On the retirement of Professor Paul Mathieu he was appointed to the Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Hôpital Cochin in Paris in 1948, and together with Judet and Cauchoix he played a major part in its development as a modern orthopaedic department. He gradually built up an outstanding reputation for teaching and research so that at the time of his death seventeen of the twenty-four chefs de service in orthopaedics in the Paris area had formerly held junior posts in his department. He was a frequent visitor to British and American centres and was awarded Honorary Fellowships of the American, English and Edinburgh Colleges. In 1959 he became President of the Société Française d'Orthopédie. He was President of the International Society of Orthopaedics which met in Paris in 1966 and published numerous books and articles on orthopaedic subjects. He became an international traveller and lecturer and in this country he delivered the Robert Jones lecture in 1954 and the Watson-Jones lecture in 1963. He received the Légion d'Honneur, l'Ordre du Mérite and the Croix de Guerre from his own country and numerous honorary Fellowships and Doctorates from foreign countries. His hobbies were skiing, climbing and sailing. He was married twice. His first wife was Anna. His second wife, Christine, survived him, and also two children Catherine and Jean by his first marriage. He died on 17 October 1989.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007501
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching King, Kevin Francis (1933 - 2015)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Richard de Steiger
Publication Date 2015-09-14 2017-02-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008000-E008099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380227380227
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Kevin Francis King was an orthopaedic surgeon in Melbourne, Australia. He was born in St Kilda, Melbourne, the third child of Thomas King, one of the first recognised orthopaedic surgeons in the city. His mother was Nina Mary King née Keyes, the daughter of an Irish general practitioner based in the north of the state of Victoria. On his father's side, there was history of medicine in the family in Birmingham in the 19th century. He was educated at Xavier College, Melbourne, where he played cricket. He entered the medical school of the University of Melbourne in 1951, qualifying in 1957. He became a resident medical officer at St Vincent's Hospital and in the second year worked for a period of time under his father in the orthopaedic department. This determined his choice of career as up until this time he had not paid much attention to orthopaedics. After completing his residency years, he moved to London, having decided upon a career in surgery. He sat the primary FRCS while a resident at the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. After this time, he was a resident at Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford. He passed his final exams to gain his FRCS in 1960. He then embarked on a career in orthopaedics, obtaining a resident post at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, where he came under the influence of the renowned Sir Herbert Seddon. This equipped him with skill, experience and exactness of examination in clinical orthopaedics, particularly in peripheral nerve injuries. There was many a registrar who shuddered when asked to perform a brachial plexus examination in Kevin's presence. After this, he moved to a registrar post at the London Hospital, a demanding job in a busy department, where junior staff were exposed to sharp criticism by the department head, Sir Reginald Watson-Jones, for any shortcomings. In 1964, his father retired and he returned to Melbourne. His fiancée, Patsy Coakley, one of four daughters of an Irish doctor in Yorkshire, followed him and they were married in Melbourne in that year. In addition to following his father in private practice, he initially held clinical appointments in orthopaedics at both St Vincent's and the Royal Children's Hospital, giving him further experience in paediatric orthopaedics. Along with a colleague, Jonathan Rush, he commenced the first specialist orthopaedic service at the Western General Hospital. His tireless work as head of the unit resulted in the first accredited orthopaedic registrar being appointed in 1984. In 1985, Kevin took on the daunting task of revitalising the orthopaedic department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and established a successful elective orthopaedic unit at Essendon Hospital, as well as overseeing a busy trauma unit. He was director of the department of orthopaedics until his retirement in 1998. Kevin made significant contributions to the practice of orthopaedics. He published one of the first papers on intramedullary fixation and crossbolting of femoral shaft fractures. He was on the editorial board of the *British Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery* and was heavily involved in the affairs of the Australian Orthopaedic Association (AOA) and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He was instrumental in expanding orthopaedic training to country hospitals in Victoria and was chief examiner for the AOA. He served as president of the AOA in 1991 and gave his presidential address at a combined meeting with New Zealand in Christchurch. He served the AOA for many years with distinction. Although Kevin sometimes had a somewhat fearsome reputation, especially as a senior surgical examiner, he was scrupulously fair and took a keen interest in helping younger surgeons. Perhaps his greatest legacy has been teaching and mentoring orthopaedic surgical trainees over the years, and he was especially proud of the increasing number of female orthopaedic surgeons. Kevin was widely read and had a particularly keen interest in naval and orthopaedic history. His library was well stocked and, importantly, well read! Although he enjoyed cricket, he was not enthusiastic about the more combative sports. Those of us present at weekly orthopaedic case conferences over the years will always remember Kevin's turn of phrase, often introducing a relevant orthopaedic opinion with an historical, amusing quotation. He continued to work after he ceased operating and had a very successful medico-legal career until his final retirement in 2014. One suspects there are many barristers who were glad to see him retire as Kevin always relished the challenge in the courtroom. This was perhaps the one combative sport that he enjoyed! Unfortunately, his wife passed away just after Kevin's retirement and this deeply affected him. He died on 3 July 2015, aged 82. He was survived by his son Paul, a respiratory physician, and his daughter, Catherine. Another daughter, Helen, had died in childhood.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008044
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching McGhee, John James (1931 - 2006)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2008-01-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000400-E000499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372625372625
Occupation General surgeon
Details John James McGhee, known as ‘Jack’, was a surgeon in the Canadian town of Prince Georgia, British Columbia (BC). He was born in Princeton, BC, on 6 December 1931 and raised in Trail. His parents, Thomas Doyle McGhee, a miner, and Agnes Wilson McGhee, both originally from Glasgow, agreed that Jack and his younger brother, Gordon, should try to avoid life in the mines. Jack subsequently enrolled in the University of British Columbia. Having played for the Trail Smoke Eaters as a junior, Jack was on the university hockey team, but quickly realised he wasn’t cut out for life as a professional sportsman. He concentrated on medicine and was in the third graduating class of the faculty of medicine, being licensed to practise in 1957. With a group of classmates he went to the UK, and gained much experience in orthopaedic and general surgery. When off duty he enjoyed all the cultural and sport opportunities offered in Europe. There were certain consultants who strongly influenced Jack’s decision to pursue general surgery. The first was Michael Reilly in Plymouth, who noted Jack’s ‘good hands’ and encouraged him by teaching him many skills. A strong negative influence was a position at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital where, in spite of encounters with many famous specialists, such as Seddon, and free tickets to the opera etc, he realised that the esoterica he was dealing with were not what he was really interested in. However, he continued with orthopaedics by taking a position at Nottingham General Hospital, before proceeding to Edinburgh to tackle the primary. He passed the Edinburgh FRCS exam in 1962, and returned to the Nottingham General to take a surgical registrar position. His chiefs were Tommy Field and John Swan, and the senior registrar was Ted Oliver. The experience of working with these three skilled surgeons was inspiring. It was an extremely busy hospital, and the call schedule involved each surgical firm being on call for a continuous week every month. Cold surgery was not set aside during this week, so the work was intense. Ted Oliver died on the golf course, much too young – he was 45. Jack completed the London fellowship during this period, in 1964. In November 1964 he married Carolyn Meetham, also a doctor, whom he had met in Nottingham. He had applied for one senior registrar position in Sheffield, but realised that it would be a very long haul before he achieved this promotion, and it was decided to return to British Columbia in 1965, after seven years in Britain. On returning to Canada, while Carolyn kept bread on the table with an assistant resident position in paediatrics in Vancouver, Jack studied for the Canadian Certification in General Surgery, which he achieved in 1965. On weekends off they travelled around the province looking for a town which wanted a specialist surgeon. Prince George was the only city where they were welcomed with open arms, so they settled there. Jack formed a dynamic and legendary partnership with Bob Ewert, who had earlier come back to his home town as the city’s first specialist general surgeon. Jack was a very skilled surgeon, much loved for his humour and courtesy, humanity towards patients, and scrupulous professionalism. He was an inspiring and enthusiastic mentor for a generation of medical students and surgical residents. Wanderlust led him to travel widely with his family. They volunteered their professional services in Belize, Dominica, Papua New Guinea and Somalia. Jack retired from active practice in 1996 after 30 years. He was honoured to be made an honorary member of the department of surgery of the University of British Columbia in 1995, and of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia in 2000. During his working life, his many hobbies included mountaineering. He was a member of the Alpine Club of Canada for 25 years and an active member of the Prince George section, where another of his interests was indulged: he would enter the photographic competition with success. He was a wonderful skier, and undertook many traverses and climbs with and without guides in winter and summer. He loved fly fishing for trout and steelhead. He was also interested in beekeeping, at which he became an expert. With his family, he travelled to all the continents, for exploration, natural history and especially bird watching. He gave many beautiful slide shows based on these travels. He carried on with these pursuits after retirement, and added more, including cooking. His final remarkable trek, around Manaslu in central Nepal in April 2005, was undertaken in great pain from bone secondaries, before the diagnosis of lung cancer was made in August 2005. Nobody was surprised that he bore his illness with extraordinary courage. He died on 18 April 2006, at home, surrounded by his family. Posthumously he was inducted into the Northern Medical Hall of Fame in January 2007. He is survived by his wife Carolyn, three adult children (Alex Jane, a nurse, Rachel, a physician, and Dougal, a carpenter, whose wife is Kirsten) and two grandchildren, all of whom he was extremely proud.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000441
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Wright, James Lawrence (1915 - 2011)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-17 2016-09-01
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006100-E006199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378334378334
Occupation Obstetrician and gynaecologist
Details Professor James Lawrence (Laurie) Wright passed away in Dunedin on 8 September 2011 at the age of 96. Whether delivering babies, guiding nervous rural GPs, or serving as an army doctor in World War 2, Prof Laurie Wright was guided by a sense of duty. Professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Otago Medical School from 1951 until he retired in 1980, Prof Wright died in Dunedin in September, aged 96. James Lawrence Wright was born in May 1915, the eldest of William and Helen Wright's five children, whom they raised in Forbury, Dunedin. After attending Forbury School and Otago Boys' High School, he attended Otago Medical School, enlisting with the Otago University Medical Company in 1932. After leaving medical school he worked at Dunedin Hospital for two years, and then as a locum GP in Westport, before being awarded an obstetrics and gynaecology scholarship in Melbourne. The war prompted his early return to New Zealand, to join the air force, but he was seconded to the army because of its need for medics. Dunedin lawyer Bill Wright said his father was not entirely happy about the secondment, having gained his wings. However, he distinguished himself as an army doctor in the North African campaign, and later in Italy. He attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was mentioned in dispatches. In Italy, he married Belle Henderson, a New Zealand war nurse, near Naples in April 1945. Mr Wright said his mother, who was from Central Otago, had followed Prof Wright, determined not to be parted from him. "When he was posted overseas, she determined to follow him and enlisted with the army...she followed him through Africa and Italy and ultimately got her man at the end of the war." Unusually, the two were allowed to serve together for several months, before they were discharged and travelled to London by ship in December, 1945. After several years at St George's Hospital in London, life back in Dunedin was characterised by hard work, and long night's away delivering babies. His father never glorified his war years, seeing it as a duty, Mr Wright said. He had an excellent recall of detail, and had hoped to write of his war experience, which did not come about. His stories of well-known campaigns instilled in his son a life-long interest in history. He was strong on ethics, and was not moralistic or judgemental. "He once told me, you should not have to ask what is the correct thing to do, you should instinctively know." He related well to people from all walks of life. He made time to speak to people, regardless of their place in the hospital hierarchy, Mr Wright said. Former patients had contacted him since his father's death - more than a dozen - to thank him for his father's care. On professional visits to Wellington, he stayed in a state house with his World War 2 driver, with whom he had a firm bond, rather than at a hotel. Fly fishing was Prof Wright's main passion, although he was also a rugby man, a supporter of Otago rugby, both the university, and the province. Emeritus Prof Richard Seddon, of Queenstown, said Prof Wright largely dedicated himself to clinical practice, rather than research. However, he was a leader in promoting maternal and perinatal mortality documentation and review to improve clinical safety. Establishing a clinical and academic unit of excellence in Dunedin was his focus, Prof Seddon said. "He was a stickler for form." He was very interested in supporting the role of GPs in obstetric practice, Prof Seddon said. Dr Brian McMahon, a student of Prof Wright's in the 1950s, who worked as a GP in the 1960s in Cromwell and was superintendent of Cromwell Hospital, said his old teacher helped him with difficult and stressful births. Transport was an issue in those days, and GPs had to cope with a greater number of difficult cases. Dr McMahon served in the Vietnam conflict, leading to a close bond with his old teacher. University students of the 1950s lacked awareness of the older generation's war service. "If only we had known that as students, I think our attitudes would have been different. We would have had a rapport." In retirement, Prof Wright did not give up medicine, becoming a surgical assistant at Mercy Hospital for a decade, his friend, former student, and colleague, Dr Alan Donoghue, recalled. Prof Wright did not work in the private sector pre-retirement, and thus had no "cushion of continuing practice to soften the abrupt transition". The other doctors at Mercy, nearly all former students, greatly enjoyed his wisdom, humility, and good humour. "He was a marvellous raconteur, and enlivened many hours with fascinating historical anecdotes." Mrs Wright died in 2008, shortly after the couple moved to Ross Home in late 2007. Prof Wright is survived by two children, Bill and Catharine, six grandchildren, and one great grandchild. This was written by Eileen Goodwinand appeared in the *Otago Daily Times* on 10 December 2011 and is reproduced here with their kind permission.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006151
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Hughes, Sir Edward Stuart Reginald (1919 - 1998)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380882380882
Occupation Colorectal surgeon General surgeon
Details Sir Edward Hughes, known as 'Bill', was Chair of Surgery at Monash University and a former President of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He was born on 4 July 1919, the third child of Reginald Hawkins Hughes and Annie Grace née Langford. He was educated at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, where he was academically successful and also good at sport, representing the school at tennis, football and the hurdles. He was house captain in 1937, a position which gave him an early opportunity to display his great organising abilities. While at school he developed otosclerosis, which became a lifelong disability: eventually he became totally deaf in one ear and had only 30 per cent hearing in the other. In 1938, he entered the medical course at Melbourne University, gained honours through the course, and finished with first class honours in surgery and medicine, coming top of the year in aggregate marks. As a student he coped with his deafness by comparing his notes with those of fellow students. He entered Queen's College in his second year and represented the university at football, gaining an Australian blue. He also rowed for his college. For two years he held house jobs at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. During the second year he also tutored at Queen's College. He then took an MD by examination and followed this with the MS. During this time he was a demonstrator in anatomy under Sydney Sunderland and contributed to papers on peripheral and cranial nerves. Sunderland suggested that he apply for a scholarship to study at Oxford under H J Seddon, where he stayed for a year, obtaining both parts of the FRCS. From 1947 to 1948 he was surgical registrar under Joe Fathi at the Connaught Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford (East London). He then won a Leverhulme research fellowship at the College, where he made a study of the development of the mammary gland, which gained him an Arris and Gale lectureship in 1949. He next went to St Mark's Hospital as clinical assistant and then RSO, which led to a life-long interest in colorectal surgery. He returned to Melbourne in 1950 as assistant surgeon to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, but this was interrupted by Army service in the Korean war. The Australian Army Hospital in Kure, Japan, was short of experienced surgeons and Hughes, who had spent a brief period as a private in a field ambulance unit, was approached to become commanding officer with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He organised the hospital services in Kure, did a great deal of the surgery himself, established a high standard of documentation and promoted the rehabilitation of the wounded. After he returned to Melbourne, he remained on the reserve and became surgical adviser to the Army. He became surgeon to outpatients at the Royal Melbourne in 1954 and surgeon to inpatients from 1963 to 1974. During this time he built up a large private practice and wrote prolifically, including more than 200 papers and several textbooks on colorectal surgery. In 1974 he accepted the Chair of Surgery at Monash University and moved from the Royal Melbourne to the Alfred Hospital, where he remained until his retirement in 1984. After some negotiation, the University agreed to his taking his private practice with him to the Alfred. He was a stimulating head of department, an initiator of research and very active in teaching undergraduates. A man of immense energy, Hughes was an excellent technical surgeon and had a keen sense of humour. He had a great reputation as a teacher, which began with his undergraduate tutorials at Queen's College. His contributions to colorectal surgery, including the largest series of bowel cancers in Australia, were mostly based on his private referral practice, in which he showed that excellent academic work could be done outside the confines of a university department. Another important contribution came from his interest in road trauma, a major problem in Australia. He played a large part in the introduction of seat-belts in Victoria, one of the earliest examples of such legislation in the world. During the latter part of his career he was involved with the affairs of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, of which he was an outstanding President from 1975 to 1978. He was knighted in 1977. He received honorary memberships of surgical societies in Europe and the USA, and honorary fellowships of a number of colleges, including those of Ireland, Edinburgh, Canada, the Philippines and USA, as well as our own. He gave a large number of named lectures all over the world. He married Alison Lelean, a ward sister, when he was a house surgeon. They had four children. Hughes developed Parkinson's disease in 1978, which became increasingly severe. He died on 16 October 1998, probably of a bowel obstruction.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008699
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Wright, Peter Randell (1919 - 2007)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Michael Edgar
Publication Date 2011-09-29
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001400-E001499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373620373620
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Peter Wright was a well-known and well-regarded figure in the British Orthopaedic Association of the 1970s and 1980s as an articulate contributor to the biannual conferences. Much of this arose from his considerable experience of working in developing countries, notably Malawi, Burma and South Africa. His active involvement in World Orthopaedic Concern also derived from that experience. Peter Randell Wright was born on 11 January 1919. He grew up in Leeds, the product of a Christian (Methodist) household. He was the eldest of three brothers, all of whom entered medicine, the other two becoming general practitioners, the elder having obtained his FRCS. His father, Herbert Randell Poulter Wright, was a commercial representative and his mother Alice Jane Wright née Wooley, the daughter of a brick manufacturer, was a classical musician, instilling a musical interest in her eldest son. From Roundhay High School, Leeds, Peter moved to Leeds Grammar School from 1927 to 1937. He was attracted to medicine by the example of the family's GP in Leeds and won an open scholarship in natural sciences to the Queen's College Oxford in 1937, supported by the Leeds senior city scholarship in medicine. He did his clinical studies at the Radcliffe Infirmary and became a house surgeon to Sir Herbert Seddon, who was then involved in his classic work on peripheral nerve injuries at the Wingfield-Morris Hospital, Oxford. Called up to the RAMC in 1943, he progressed to the rank of major as a deputy assistant director medical services in South East Asia Command, from 1945 until his demobilisation a year later. Peter Wright returned to be a house surgeon to Sir Hugh Cairns at the Radcliffe Infirmary and, after passing the FRCS, was appointed as a registrar in general surgery to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from 1948 to 1949. He returned to Oxford as a senior registrar to the accident service at the Radcliffe Infirmary in 1949 and, a year later, moved back to the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital as the resident surgical officer under George R Girdlestone and Joseph Trueta. Peter Wright achieved his consultant appointment in 1952 to the Canterbury and Thanet Health District, with what he has described as a fortunate balance. This comprised trauma at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital with beds for elective orthopaedics at the Royal Sea-Bathing Hospital Margate, free from the constraints of an increasing trauma load at the acute hospital. During his valued 29 years in this position until his retirement from the NHS in 1981 he was joined by five colleagues who formed an integrated and happy team. The re-organisation of specialty training in the late sixties enabled Canterbury and Margate to become part of the King's College Hospital higher surgical training programme in orthopaedics. In 1966, Peter was seconded for a year to Burma by the NHS, under the Colombo plan, to start a training programme in trauma and orthopaedics, initially involving seven young Burmese surgeons. During that period he advised the Burma government on the establishment of a national trauma service based at the main teaching hospitals in Rangoon (Yangon) and Mandalay. He returned for further three-month secondments between 1972 and 1984. Retirement from the NHS in 1981 at the age of 62 left him with more time to be involved in the orthopaedics of developing countries. With the opportunities in Burma no longer available, he turned his attention to Africa, becoming orthopaedic surgeon to the government of Zululand between 1982 and 1987. In 1983 he advised the government of Brunei on paediatric orthopaedics. He worked in the MAP (Malawi Against Polio) programme until his total retirement from clinical orthopaedics in July 1989, aged 70. Peter's private life was full. He married Margaret Alice Milward in 1943. They had two natural sons, Martin John and David Charles, and then, 10 years later, two daughters by adoption, Elizabeth Jeanetta and Alison Mary. His wife Margaret predeceased him in 1996. He subsequently married Jean Davies, a teacher. They moved back to Oxford. Peter and Jean participated in the activities of the Senior Fellows Society. Peter Wright's orthopaedic contributions included papers on traumatic chylothorax, posterior dislocation of the shoulder, and fractures of the forearm in children in the British volumes of the *Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery*. He was a member of the British Orthopaedic Association council from 1965 to 1966. As a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine he was on the orthopaedic section committee from 1964 to 1966. He was a member of and made significant contributions to the meetings of World Orthopaedic Concern from 1974 until his last few years. Outside medicine, he was a member of his local Rotary Club from 1956 to 1997 and the Samaritans from 1982 to 1986. In 1997, he joined the then 'Blairite' Labour Party and also in 1997 threw his weight behind the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. Peter Wright achieved success at golf, squash and rugby fives in school teams and represented his college at cricket and rugby during his Oxford days. Thereafter, he continued with his interests in rock climbing and mountain walking. In later years he enjoyed travelling widely and developed ornithological expertise, particularly in Burma and South Africa. Music was always an important hobby following his mother's early encouragement. He played a range of keyboard instruments, built and played his own clavichord and harpsichord and was always in demand to accompany voice and strings. He died on 10 April 2007.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001437
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Craig, Alfred John (1909 - 1970)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-10-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006200-E006299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378426378426
Occupation General surgeon Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Alfred John Craig was born at Porta Maggiore, Vittoriosa, Malta, on 29 May 1909. He was the fourth child and fourth son of John Craig, Chief Clerk of HM Dockyard, Malta and Sophie née Gatt. He started his education at HM Dockyard School, Malta, one of the best at the time. In due course he was admitted to the Royal University of Malta, where he obtained the BSc in 1927 and graduated MD in 1931 as first student in his course. He was hence awarded a Government Travelling Scholarship which enabled him to go to the United Kingdom on the first of a long series of visits. Over a period of two years he worked at the London Hospital, Wimbledon Cottage Hospital and Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In 1933 he returned to Malta to work as first assistant to Professor P P Debono, then Professor of Surgery and first Maltese holder of the FRCS. Other appointments he held during this time included that of demonstrator of anatomy at the University and medical officer to St Edward's College. In 1938 Alfred Craig returned to the United Kingdom for a long spell, no doubt with the encouragement of Professor Debono, who influenced him in many ways. In the following year he obtained the FRCS. During the first part of the war he was at Mile End Hospital, London El, where he acted as senior surgeon for some time. Indeed he was specially commended for his work on air raid casualties here. Later he was surgeon at Southport Infirmary where he did the work of three surgeons who were with the RAMC. In 1944 he was at the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital, Oxford, where he helped with the Normandy casualties and where he was preparing for his return to Malta. On his appointment as the first lecturer in orthopaedic surgery at the Royal University of Malta in 1945 he was given the task of building and organizing an orthopaedic department from scratch. This had become urgent in view of the hundreds of victims of the 1943 and subsequent epidemics of anterior poliomyelitis, now happily extinct in the Maltese Islands. The precepts and example of Sir Herbert Seddon, Professor Trueta and Professor Girdlestone were a great help and soon John Craig, as he liked to be called, had a first class orthopaedic department, the pride of the hospital and the envy of the other departments. In 1951 he succeeded Professor Debono in the Chair of Surgery at the Royal University of Malta and as senior surgeon to the government. The fine qualities that made him a renowned surgeon in his own country and the influence that surgeons like Professor Debono himself, Professor Grey Turner, Sir James Learmonth in the earlier years, and later Sir Clifford Naunton Morgan and Sir Stanford Cade had exerted on him at various times now bore fruit. An already well developed department of surgery was geared to the needs of modern surgery. The carefulness and meticulous attention to detail that characterised his surgery were also features of the care that he lavished on his patients, as also of his teachings. His unstinted capacity for work drew an enthusiastic cooperation from all in his department, though his standards were high and discipline strict. His patients had the utmost faith in him. His natural love of children, fostered by the years he spent treating deformed and crippled children, helped considerably in making paediatric surgery almost his pet speciality and putting it on sure foundations. On his retirement in 1969 he was appointed Emeritus Professor of Surgery. In 1957 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem. In 1966 he was made a Knight of Magistral Grace of the Sovereign Military Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. Between 1950 and 1962 he was civilian surgeon at David Bruce Military Hospital, Malta, whereupon he was appointed consultant in surgery to the Royal Navy. He was a Corresponding Fellow of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and a member of the Editorial Committee of the *British Journal of Surgery*. He was Membre Titulaire of the Société Internationale de Chirurgie and a Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association. In Malta he had been sometime President of the Malta Branch of the British Medical Association and first President of the Association of Surgeons and Physicians of Malta. A shy man with a dry humour, he preferred the company of his family during his all too few periods of rest, but he enjoyed social occasions on a small scale. He had very little time for hobbies in later years but he could be noticed, in between cases, reading some philosophical treatise or a book on mathematics or history. He liked to relax listening to orchestral music or going to the ballet or opera. He enjoyed travelling, especially to England for which he had an abiding love. On 10 May 1941 he married Emily White from Yorkshire; they had one son and four daughters. Professor Craig was taken suddenly ill while driving his car on 5 October 1970, crashed into a wall, and died from his multiple injuries. Publications: Space and time. *Athenaeum Melitensis*, 1926, 13, 21. Brucellosis myelopathy. (with W Ganado) *J Bone jt Surg* 1958, 40A, 1380. The logic of surgery. *St Luke's Hospital Gazette*, 1970, 5, 3-31. Cases of renal tuberculosis: Joint meeting with the Moynihan Surgical Club at Malta Medical School, May 1969.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006243
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Burrows, Harold Jackson (1902 - 1981)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-11-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006300-E006399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378568378568
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Harold Jackson Burrows was born at Harrow, Middlesex, on 9 May 1902. His father was Harold Burrows FRCS and his grandfather was a graduate of St Bartholomew's Hospital, who became a Surgeon-Major in the Bombay Army. He was educated at Edinburgh House, Lee-on-Solent and Cheltenham College, where he was a scholar. He then went to King's College, Cambridge, where he was a half-blue for rifle shooting, captained the shooting eight and regularly shot at Bisley. He went to St Bartholomew's Hospital for his clinical training, won the Bentley Prize and qualified in 1927. He was house surgeon to the surgical professorial unit (1927-28) followed by his appointment as third assistant on this unit, working with Professor George Gask, Sir Thomas Dunhill, Mr (later Sir) James Paterson Ross, Mr (later Sir) Geoffrey Keynes. He was awarded a Beaverbrook Research Scholarship by the Royal College of Surgeons (1930-31) and he returned to Cambridge to work on tissue culture, thus increasing his knowledge of pathology as a basis of clinical work. He also spent six months at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, working under Alexis Carrel. Later he continued his research in the physiology department at the Royal College of Surgeons. Jackson Burrows was appointed surgical registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in 1931 and decided to devote his professional life to orthopaedic surgery. He was inspired by R C Elmslie, the first specialist orthopaedic surgeon at Bart's and one of the great pioneers in this speciality. They had much in common and Jackson Burrows remained a devoted disciple. He was also encouraged and helped by S L Higgs. He was appointed chief assistant in the orthopaedic department at St Bartholomew's Hospital (1931-36) and assistant orthopaedic surgeon (1937-48). When the second world war broke out he moved to Friern Barnet Hospital under the wartime arrangements of the Emergency Medical Service. As a Surgeon-Commander in the RNVR Jackson Burrows spent about two years of his service in Australia, renewing and forming many lasting friendships with antipodean surgeons who held him in high esteem. In 1949 he was greatly pleased to become an active civilian consultant surgeon to the Royal Navy and continued until 1977 in an honorary capacity. After the war he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital (1948-67) and lecturer in orthopaedics at St Bartholomew's Medical College. He had a long association with the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital as assistant surgeon (1946-48); orthopaedic surgeon (1948-67) and he was Dean, Institute of Orthopaedics, British Postgraduate Medical Federation, University of London, 1946-64 and 1967-70. The latter appointment was a tremendous task which he took up with his usual enthusiasm, creating a department of pathology, a library which he largely furnished as well as providing the nucleus of books of historical orthopaedic interest, and a department of medical photography. In addition to all these responsible posts, he was honorary orthopaedic surgeon to the National Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System and to Chailey Heritage Craft School and Hospital which was near to his heart. He was consultant advisor in orthopaedics to the Ministry of Health and Chairman, Standing Advisory Committee on Artificial Limbs. He was awarded the Robert Jones Gold Medal in 1937 and he was elected to the executive committee of the British Orthopaedic Association, holding important posts culminating in his election as President in 1966-67. He was President of the Section of Orthopaedics, Royal Society of Medicine and served on the Council from 1964 to 1972. He was Nuffield Visiting Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1963 and in 1964 he was visiting Professor at Los Angeles. In 1964 he was elected a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons and served until 1972. He was a Hunterian Professor in 1932 and received honourable mention for the Jacksonian Prize in 1933. He made a great contribution to the *Journal of bone and joint surgery* as assistant editor, then deputy editor and he was an active chairman of the editorial board from 1961 until 1973. During the whole of this period he was tireless in editing or rewriting other contributors' articles and he made a most valuable contribution to the style in which these articles were written. His own writings were admirable contributions to the literature and his clarity of thought and economy of expression were a constant challenge to contributors, for he had a great concern for the use of English. He became a Fellow of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland; the Société Internationale de Chirurgie Orthopèdique; a member of the International Skeletal Society; a corresponding member of the Australian and American Orthopaedic Association and a member of the New Zealand Association. The Institute of Orthopaedics was a major concern of his and he was largely responsible for the funding of the only Chair in Orthopaedics in the University by the then National Fund for Research in Crippling Diseases, first held by his respected colleague, Sir Herbert Seddon, and the rich collection of historical books in orthopaedics. He was a first-rate orthopaedic clinician and surgeon and his patients looked upon him as a comforter and friend as well as a surgeon. There can be few famous surgeons who were so selfless and retiring and he was a gentleman whose kindness, courtesy, humour and work for others is long remembered. He was known as Jack to his family, Jacko or JB to his many friends and colleagues. He never married but was survived by his brother Kenneth and many adoring nieces and nephews when he died on 5 February 1981 aged 78 years.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006385
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Miller, John Roy Mackay (1921 - 2014)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Frank J Branicki
Publication Date 2014-11-25 2015-07-20
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006400-E006499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378615378615
Occupation General surgeon Vascular surgeon
Details Roy Miller was a senior consultant surgeon at Kenyatta National and Nairobi hospitals, Kenya. He was born in Croydon on 26 June 1921, the son of Arthur John Miller, assistant secretary of the Prudential Assurance Company, and Marjorie Louise Miller née Garrett. He was educated at Cumnor House School and then St Lawrence College, Ramsgate. His undergraduate training took place at King's College Hospital, London. Roy's interest in surgery coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War. As such, his surgical training was expedited during the early 1940s, so that he was able to do part of it while still a medical student. Some of this training took place in Glasgow because of the Blitz in London. Roy won the Hughes prize for anatomy and prosected for the Royal College of Surgeons during his training. In 1943, during the black-out, while a junior doctor at King's, Roy literally collided into his future wife Mary (née Moller), who was still a medical student at the time, in a corridor one night. They were married two years later. Roy's house appointments included the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, where he worked with the father of modern-day plastic surgery, Sir Archibald McIndoe. He was a surgical registrar at King's to Sir Cecil Wakeley and E G Muir (later Sir Edward). Roy gained his FRCS in 1946. Called up to do his British military service in his capacity as a surgeon, he was posted to Kenya in 1947. Having spent two happy years in Mombasa at the British Military Hospital, he became a provincial surgeon in the Kenya Colonial Medical Service in 1949. Postings to several small hospitals, in particular Kisumu in north-western Kenya, saw Roy serving large populations with very little support in the way of laboratory facilities or X-rays. The X-ray department opened a year after Roy started in Kisumu, coinciding with a memorable ward round with Sir Herbert Seddon, who happened to be visiting. Serving together with Roy in Kisumu for eight years, Mary first developed her interest in anaesthetics, often working in conjunction with Roy on operative cases. In 1958 Roy was recommended by his senior colleague, Bill Kirkaldy-Willis, an orthopaedic surgeon, for a post as consultant surgeon in Nairobi. Cliff Braimbridge in particular was his surgical mentor early on, and Roy was promoted to senior specialist in 1972, spending 28 years at the Kenyatta National Hospital and Nairobi Hospital. He was ultimately appointed chief surgeon for Kenya, and personal surgeon to the founding president of independent Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. Roy enjoyed a busy general surgical and vascular private practice in Nairobi, sharing consulting rooms with well-known surgeons Gerald Nevill and Imre Loeffler. Over the years he became a doyen of the surgical fraternity in Kenya; he was a founding member of the Association of Surgeons of East Africa and president from 1964 to 1965. During his career Roy published on a variety of surgical topics, starting in 1951 with possibly the earliest demonstration of the value of penicillin and skin grafting for tropical ulcer ('Treatment of tropical ulcer'. *East African Medical Journal* 1951 Vol.28 p.120). Another area of research was pneumatosis intestinalis, with a study using nitrous oxide and helium ('Pneumatosis intestinalis'. *East African Medical Journal* 1964 Vol.41 p.194). His main interests however lay in portal hypertension ('Portal hypertension in Nairobi'. *East African Medical Journal* 1967 Vol.44 p.376) and cancer of the oesophagus. In 1967 he established, in conjunction with Antonia Bagshawe, the first liver clinic at Kenyatta National Hospital. The separation of conjoined twins at the hospital on 18 December 1977, where one twin survived to adulthood, he regarded as technically one of his most memorable operations. Roy was as much a vascular surgeon as general, and he performed some of the earliest aortic grafts in Kenya. He published in this area too, and in 1980 was the first to describe tropical coagulopathic ischaemia and its treatment with streptokinase ('Tropical coagulopathic ischaemia'. *The Proceedings of the Association of Surgeons of East Africa* 1980 Vol.3 p.83). In 1981, he and his son Brian, who subsequently became a general surgeon and academic at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, set up the first colonoscopy service in Kenya. Another of Roy's passions was the empowerment, with some basic surgical training, of district hospital doctors in Kenya, to decrease the need for urgent transfer of straightforward cases to metropolitan centres. In 1986, aged 65, Roy retired from surgery and migrated with Mary to Australia to join his daughter in Victoria. Moves to Canberra and northern New South Wales followed and he enjoyed time with his family, including his two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. A strong character, Roy had a very perceptive mind. One of the hallmarks of a true professional is to be able to encourage and inspire one's juniors, and herein he excelled. Numerous surgical trainees remember him with affection and gratitude, having become senior surgeons in public, private and professorial posts. His distinguished career led to the award of an OBE in 1975, at an investiture ceremony held in Nairobi, in recognition of his service to health care in Africa. A number of diverse interests outside of surgery were pursued with customary vigour, particularly dinghy sailing. Roy was the manager of the Kenya sailing team at the Rome Olympics in 1960, having won numerous sailing trophies both on the Kavirondo Gulf at Kisumu and at the Nairobi Dam. Roy loved to sail on Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley, winning the East African Fireball Championship there in 1982, and his sailing continued during his retirement in Australia. Quite late in life Roy mastered computer skills sufficient to correspond with friends and family, and he read the *BMJ* and *Time* magazine until the week he passed away. In closing, Roy Miller was a surgeon's surgeon and a mentor to many. He and Mary, who was increasingly incapacitated during the last 15 years of her life, were married for 70 years. Roy took care of her throughout with loving devotion, respect and support. Her passing in August 2014 was followed just three weeks later by his own demise at age 93, on 20 September 2014. He was survived by his son Brian and daughter Wendy.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006432
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Poirier, Henry (1931 - 2014)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by David Nairn
Publication Date 2014-03-21 2014-06-27
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005100-E005199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377351377351
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Henry Poirier was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex. The original family name of Birnbaum, meaning 'pear tree', was changed to the French equivalent - Poirier - by his grandfather, who shortly afterwards emigrated to Chile with his English wife, where he set up as a fur trader in Santiago. Henry's father, Arthur, relocated to London and, with Faye, Henry's mother, set up in business as clothiers. Henry was born in Forest Gate on 2 August 1931 and brought up in Wanstead, but during the war was evacuated first to Stansted in Essex and then Kidlington in Oxfordshire. Henry's post-war education was at Wanstead County High School, during which time he immersed himself in all manner of non-academic pursuits, including rugby, athletics, acting on stage, debating, painting and joining the air section of the Combined Cadet Force. He also joined and attended the Ilford Jewish Youth Club. His father tragically died when he was 15, and his uncle became his sponsor. His initial wish was to study architecture, but this was vetoed by the family, who felt it was not a secure profession. They were however prepared to fund his education in medicine. Notwithstanding his many diverse activities at school, he managed to achieve a scholarship to St Bartholomew's Hospital and thoroughly enjoyed his time as a medical student, pursuing all the activities he adopted at school, especially the stage, performing in plays and acting in and writing Christmas shows. He qualified MB BS in June 1954 and was appointed to prestigious house jobs at Bart's. He was house physician to Sir Ronald Bodley Scott, and house surgeon to Basil Hume and Alan Hunt. In August 1954 he was conscripted into the Army to carry out his National Service and was posted for two years to Malaya to the Military Hospital, where he had to deal with a substantial amount of trauma injuries, as there was still an emergency in the region. He also spent three months as the resident medical officer to the 1st Battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment stationed in Singapore, and was promoted to the rank of major. After National Service, he joined the Territorial Army, commanding a field surgical team, committing him to a minimum of two weeks Army camp a year, which he continued well into his time as a consultant. He was awarded a Territorial Decoration with bar. In order to pursue a surgical career, he became an anatomy demonstrator at King's College, passing his primary FRCS at the first attempt, during which time he met his future wife Marian. They were married in August 1959. This was followed by a two-year general surgical registrar post back at Bart's, enabling him to obtain the final FRCS exam at the first attempt. In 1960 he was fortunate to be appointed as a registrar to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH) at Stanmore and Great Portland Street, where he stayed until his consultant appointment at Harlow in January 1965. He wrote two peer-reviewed, cited articles on 'Epiphysial stapling and leg equalisation' (*J Bone Joint Surg* Br February 1968 50-B: 61-69) and Massive osteolysis of the humerus treated by resection and prosthetic replacement' (*J Bone Joint Surg* Br February 1968 50-B: 158-160). From the RNOH he was sent by Sir Herbert Seddon to work in France under Albert Trillat of Lyons for four months, one of Europe's leading knee surgeons. and this was to become his special interest. It also inspired in him a love of France and all things French. In January 1965 he joined Geoffrey Fisk at the new Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow at the very young age of 34. With Fisk he was instrumental in ensuring that registrars from Bart's spent six months at Harlow, in what became the prestigious Percivall Pott Club rotation. He set up a knee clinic at Harlow, joined international and European societies of knee surgeons, and became a founder member of the British Association for Surgery of the Knee. At this point in his career newly emerging procedures relating to the knee were being introduced, in particular arthroscopy, although it was just before the common use of the video stack, total knee replacement and extra articular stabilisation techniques for ruptured cruciate ligaments. Many procedures were performed to stave off the inevitable time when total knee replacement would be required, including tibial and femoral osteotomy, patellar advancement and realignment. Further papers, on the morbidity of arthroscopy and chondromalacia of the unstable patella, were published from his unit, and many presentations were made to learned societies. He was a popular and respected trainer of surgeons in the north Thames region and was appointed president of the Percivall Pott Club in 1991. He had invitations to lecture as visiting professor at Boston University and also lectured in Canada and Belgium. At various times he sat on and chaired hospital and regional committees, certainly pulling his weight in a medical advisory capacity and in administration. Outside of his professional achievements, he continued his love affair with the stage, joining the Bishop's Stortford Amateur Operatic Society and three other theatre groups, with whom he played many leading roles using his fine baritone voice to its full capacity. He continued to tread the boards both behind and in front of the stage in musicals and theatre until well after his retirement. He excelled at alpine skiing, having been taught as a teenager, and with his medical knowledge and skiing skills was invited to co-found the Uphill Ski Club, a charity that enabled disabled young people to enjoy the experience and freedom of skiing and moving over snow, an organisation which flourishes to this day. Apart from all these activities, he was a natural writer and wrote short stories, books, plays and poems, some of which were privately published. Not satisfied with these achievements, he was a prodigious artist, creating paintings and drawings, ranging from portraits to landscapes, many painted in his traditional house in France. He loved beautiful crafted artifacts and was a knowledgeable collector of oriental cloisonné, or finely decorated metalwork. He loved good food and became an accomplished cook with a critical appreciation of wines. Unfortunately, abdominal surgery in 1989 led to his early retirement in 1991, but allowed him to indulge his wide diversity of interests outside medicine. Sadly his final year or so of life was beset by illness relating to his previous surgery, which he bore with stoicism and without complaint. He was blessed with a 'twinkly' persona, without a trace of conceit or pomposity, and everyone with whom he came into contact loved and admired him. In short Henry Poirier was a true polymath, with amazingly wide ranging interests and multiple talents, who will leave a substantial gap in his community. He was survived by his wife Marian, three children, Nicole, Paul and David, and seven grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005168
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Griffiths, Victor George (1920 - 2014)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2014-06-13 2014-07-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005400-E005499
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377651377651
Occupation Anatomist General surgeon
Details Of those serving the needs of Malta and its population after the Second World War, the name of Victor Griffiths stands out as a most remarkable man. A gifted general surgeon, he had a very wide repertoire, including thoracic surgery. He served Malta as professor of surgery and of anatomy over many years and was described on his death by a former trainee, Michael Camilleri of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA 'as an expert diagnostician, a technically gifted thyroid, prostate, breast, stomach, biliary and colonic surgeon. He based his craft on mastery of anatomy and respect for the physiological consequences of different surgical options that led him to choose the least traumatic one'. Over a long professional life, he trained many surgeons who now practise in various parts of the world. He was a very cultured man with wide ranging interests and was the last local civilian surgeon to the Royal Navy in Malta. He was born on 23 September 1920 in Paola, a town in the Grand Harbour area of Malta. Known for having the largest parish church on the island and the Hal Safleni Hypogeum (Neolithic underground temple and burial place), it also has the only mosque and Islamic cultural centre in Malta. Victor was the son of William Edward Griffiths and Liberata Jessie Chapman. Both the Griffiths and Chapman families had naval connections, and came out to Malta in the 19th century. His father worked in the expense accounts department of the Royal Naval Dockyard, and was active in Lord Strickland's Constitutional Party, a pro-British political party, whose followers were known as 'Striklandjani'. Reputedly his father had an undercover role in intelligence and security in the Dockyard. His father had two daughters from a previous marriage and Victor Griffiths was the eldest of four sons of a second marriage. Victor Griffiths received his education at HM Dockyard School and the Lyceum, the oldest secondary school in Malta, before going to the Royal University of Malta, where he qualified with a BSc in 1939 and an MD in 1942. Local house appointments were undertaken after qualification, but he felt it was necessary to gain further experience in the UK, hopefully proceeding a surgical career. In Malta his surgical mentor was Peter-Paul Debono, whom he regarded as a master-surgeon. During his university medical training he met Mary Dolores Grech Marguerat, the daughter of Oreste Grech Marguerat and one of the few female medical students in his year. She and Victor often sat at lectures in close proximity: Mary, in the hope of improving her own lecture notes, borrowed those of Victor. On one occasion, Victor passed on a page on which was written a single sentence: 'Marie, je t'aime'! Their courtship was in part continued on long walks into the country village where her family had been evacuated. They both qualified in 1942, and married in April 1949. In November 1942, Malta had its first outbreak of poliomyelitis and a second occurred in 1945. Hugh Seddon of Oxford had launched orthopaedic services on the island, and the governor offered Verdala Castle, now the president's summer residence, as a children's orthopaedic hospital. Mary Marguerat became the medical officer and was also a founder of the Malta Polio Fund, which, having widened it scope, is still active today. From 1945 Victor Griffiths continued his studies on a Maltese government scholarship in England with the aim of obtaining the FRCS in one year, which, to everyone's surprise, he did. Advised to get more experience in provincial hospitals, he worked at the Royal United Hospital Bath and in other registrar posts. For a period he worked at Hammersmith Hospital and the British Postgraduate Medical School under many of the top surgeons, including George Grey Turner, who had come down from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It is thought he visited other London teaching hospitals, as his study wall had shields, not only of the British Postgraduate Medical School, but of St Bartholomew's, Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals. On returning to Malta in 1947, Victor Griffiths was appointed as a consultant surgeon, and in 1960, a lecturer in surgery. In 1969 he succeeded Alfred Craig as professor and head of surgery at the University of Malta and director of surgery at the health department, where he proved an inspiration to medical students and house surgeons alike. He relinquished this post in 1977 as a result of the medical union's dispute with the Dom Mintoff government. He was appointed as a consultant adviser and director of the department of surgery in 1987, retiring in 1991. From 2003 to 2008 he was university ombudsman, an ideal person to settle disputes at any level. A great believer in teamwork in the care of patients, with his colleague Alex J Warrington he performed many combined procedures, despite limited resources. The Griffiths-Warrington team performed synchronous combined abdominoperineal resection of the large intestine in patients with chronic ulcerative colitis, alternating their roles as the abdominal or perineal surgeons to hone their skills in the different parts of the surgery. During surgery he taught continually, peppering assistants and students with questions and training them to marshal their thoughts. He encouraged them to think about current practice and when conventional measures should be questioned or even abandoned. Victor Griffiths had a long interest in and fascination for the basic sciences, and was appointed professor of anatomy to the University of Malta in 1953. To glean ideas on the running a professorial department, he went back to England. From October 1953 to March 1954 he joined Alec J E Cave as an honorary lecturer in the department of anatomy, St Bartholomew's Medical School. The main author of this tribute, then demonstrating anatomy under Cave, found Griffiths a stimulating colleague with a wide anatomical knowledge, an excellent teacher of students as well as a fair examiner of their knowledge. Both Alec Cave and Victor Griffiths had the ability to make any lecture more interesting by building up blackboard pictures in coloured chalks. Throughout his active university life and beyond Griffiths' talks were, in addition to their academic value, inspiring in their use of the English language and syntax. It was said of him that: 'Compared with the way this eloquent speaker expressed words, more recent presentations look thin and shallow despite today's use of audio-visual technology.' In 1990, in retirement, Griffiths became the first editor of *BOLD*, the principal publication of the International Institute on Ageing, United Nations - Malta, and only stepped down in 2012. Outside medicine, he was a voracious reader with an insatiable appetite for learning. He was a founder member of the British Cultural Association in 1979 and became its chairman in 1988. He was a great supporter of English teaching in Maltese schools through 'speak your mind' debates with sixth form pupils. Many honours came his way: he was a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and in 1996 received Malta's National Order of Merit. In 2002 he became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE), in recognition of his work promoting relations between the United Kingdom and Malta, especially in medicine, culture and education. It was presented to him by the British High Commissioner on behalf of HM The Queen. Victor and Mary had two children. Their first child, Margaret Mary, was born in May 1950. She read languages at Bristol University, and became an educator at university and school level, and currently works in the field of dyslexia. She married Henry Naud and has two children, Chantal and Robin. Chantal has two sons, so Victor Griffiths became a great- grandfather before he died. Victor and Mary's second child, William Edward Griffiths, was born in January 1955, studied natural sciences at Oxford University and followed his parents into medicine. After house appointments in Bath and Oxford and a short spell of missionary hospital work in Zambia, he entered general practice in Richmond, Surrey. He married Lucy Boyce. Sadly, Victor Griffiths recognised the onset of his own Alzheimer's disease. He died on 28 March 2014, aged 93, and was survived by his wife Mary, two children, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005468
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bonney, George Louis William (1920 - 2007)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by David Hunt
Publication Date 2020-10-19 2021-07-02
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009800-E009899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/383872383872
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details George Bonney, consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital, London, was an original. Tall, fine looking with a dominating presence, a wry smile, an acute wit and a great way with words, he amused many and confused others. He was one of the last classically trained doctors. Whatever he said, it would be unexpected, original, often funny or disconcerting. When a junior doctor said a patient needed an X-ray, he would raise his eyes to the ceiling and cry: ‘A radiograph not X-ray! You take photographs – not lights!’ Achieving legendary status and devotion among the many who were trained by him, who knew him as GB, he was much imitated, and his many aphorisms quoted. But some just could not ‘get him’ and even feared him. He was born on 10 January 1920 in Kensington, London, the son of Ernest Henry Bonney, a GP, and Gertrude Mary Bonney née Williams, a teacher. His grandfather, William Augustus Bonney, was also a medical practitioner and his uncle, who George was particularly close to, was the famous gynaecologist Victor Bonney. Victor Bonney developed the blue antiseptic dye used as a marker in surgical procedures and known as ‘Bonney’s blue’ or, as George would say when he needed it: ‘Give me my uncle’s blood!’ At the age of 13, George won a scholarship to Eton. He was a diligent student of literature, German, Greek, Latin and history, before changing to natural sciences (rather looked down on at Eton) because he wanted to do medicine. He would always go his own way. At school he developed an interest in drama and rowing. With his joy of words and a natural irreverence, he developed a brilliant wit. George’s father died at an early age and there was no money for George to go to Cambridge, so he went straight to St Mary’s in 1938, funded by his uncle. As a student he rowed and was involved in drama and, as secretary of the student union, succeeded in transforming the library into a temporary theatre. After qualifying in 1943, George and worked as a house surgeon to Arthur Dickson Wright and Valentine Ellis. He was enormously influenced by Dickson Wright and his eccentricities which, it is said, George imitated. More significant was the influence of Valentine Ellis: he developed George’s interest in orthopaedics. Still in its infancy, orthopaedics was, like sciences at Eton, rather looked down on. But George saw that orthopaedics was a growing specialty, and he has been proved right. He saw it as the true ‘general specialty’, treating all groups of patients and all parts of the body. There were many challenges – the treatment of fractures, replacement of joints and, for George, the healing of damaged nerves. Having got the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1945, George joined the Royal Naval Reserve. He was passionate about the Navy – he loved the uniform and the comradeship. He said, ironically, it was good to have been in ‘at the end of the British Navy’! George became a master of surgery in 1947, the qualification he considered essential for a surgeon. He then went to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London, where he was taught by Sir Herbert Seddon, a notoriously hard task master. He stimulated George’s interest in the upper limb and injuries to peripheral nerves, the brachial plexus in particular. With the neurologist Roger Gilliatt, he did seminal research, developing a way of identifying the site of the lesion to the plexus by the axon response. This was published in 1954 and remained the gold-standard test until the advent of magnetic resonance imaging (‘The value of axon responses in determining the site of the lesion in traction injuries of the brachial plexus’ *Brain* 1954; 77; 588-609). With the sudden death of Valentine Ellis in 1953, George was appointed to St Mary’s to replace him, where he joined John Crawford Adams. Together they achieved distinction in their individual fields and in training future surgeons. George committed himself to work on injuries of the brachial plexus, the cervical spine and the thoracic outlet – pioneering surgery, which few surgeons would attempt. The operations were long, requiring meticulous technique and George would be left physically and emotionally drained. He was not ashamed of his emotions; he felt deeply his commitment and concern for his patients. These injuries were often in young people, who in an accident, usually from a motorcycle, were left with a paralysed and painful arm. George knew and taught how this could devastate a young person’s life. On one occasion, a young woman was presented at a clinical conference; George was asked what he thought about her management. He simply replied: ‘Isn’t she charming?’ It was true and showed how George was aware of the need to make her feel better, having had her horrible injuries discussed in front of others. This greatly impressed some surgeons from Germany who were present. Later, in the bar, George and the Germans spent the evening quoting Nietzsche, with George lamenting the fact that none of his registrars could quote poetry. George only published intermittently, which is a pity because he wrote so well. Even his letters were eagerly awaited by colleagues as they were so beautifully written and contained original thoughts usually absent from medical letters. He travelled little and seldom spoke at meetings. Essentially shy and deploring self-aggrandisement, he never received the credit due to him. His dedication to St Mary’s led him to the board of governors. He also chaired the medical committee and the district hospital medical committee during times of great change, but when these committees had some power. He was a formidable opponent and he achieved much for St Mary’s. Perhaps he is best known for his work with the council of the Medical Defence Union. He was highly respected by the legal profession, who enjoyed the intellect and originality of his expert opinion. He was happy to give lectures on medico-legal problems. These were highly entertaining, although some found them perplexing. He would often arrive late, having apparently ‘got lost’. In truth he suffered from terrible nerves. He would then stand at the lectern for what seemed an age – some would leave at this juncture – and eventually start with dramatic stammering, then say something completely unexpected. For example, when lecturing at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, his alma mater, he would start with: ‘It’s, It’s, It’s… a great honour to be asked to speak at the Institution where I trained with the three people who have had the most influence on me – Herbert Seddon, Roger Gilliatt and…and…I’ve forgotten the third.’ Then would follow the most informative, amusing and memorable talk. He would often be irreverent, saying, for example, that the discovery of penicillin was a disaster for doctors as they could no longer expect to make their money from a good bedside manner, but be expected to cure the patients swiftly or get sued. He said that the concept of the NHS was to reduce the need for healthcare by prevention and easy access to diagnosis and treatment, but he foresaw that it just increased demand and costs, which had led to a decline in the patient-doctor relationship and this, fuelled by legal aid, had led to an increase in litigation. Intolerant of cant and sycophancy, wary of institutions and convention, George was dismissive of those who flourished in these areas. He was not political, but disdainful of politics and politicians, whose motives he suspected. With his masterful presence, his wry grin, the raised hand in recognition, saying ‘Ah…Ah…Ah…It’s …’, often with a nickname of his own making, many were attracted to him and revelled in his presence. Yet he was plagued by self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy, but no one tried harder to solve intractable problems. George Bonney was above all a very good doctor, a physician who operated. Perhaps a little surprisingly and contrary to popular perception, some of the best doctors have been orthopaedic surgeons. George Bonney was one. In 1950, he married Margaret (‘Peggy’) Morgan and they had two daughters. George Bonney died on 11 February 2007. He was 87.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009805
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Cobb, Nigel John (1929 - 2018)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Nick Geary
Publication Date 2018-11-19 2020-04-08
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009400-E009499
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Trauma surgeon
Details Nigel Cobb was a consultant orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Northampton General Hospital from 1968 to 1993. He was born in Manchester on 5 March 1929, the son of Cyril Cobb and Gladys Cobb née Reece. He had an older sister and a younger brother, Leon. At the age of 18 his father had been sent to the western front in the First World War and was invalided out with severe shell shock, as a consequence Leon’s mother became the mainstay of the family. At the time of the Depression the family left Manchester for a new life in Gloucestershire. During the Second World War, Leon contracted diphtheria and was sent to an isolation hospital some five miles away. Nigel was delegated to cycle in all weathers to the hospital to deliver homemade jellies to his brother. He would pick up a handful of gravel to throw at Leon’s window and, having got his attention, would put on a mime show and do tricks on his bicycle to entertain his little brother. At 15 Nigel enjoyed making balsawood gliders, meticulously cutting the pieces from a template printed on the wood, gluing them together and putting a tissue skin over the top. In the field, Leon would help launch the glider, which would fly in three or four elegant circles, before stalling and crashing. Nigel would gather up the crushed pieces and spend the next few evenings carefully dissecting the remains, reconstructing the glider ready for the next time – possibly a trauma surgeon in the making! Nigel eventually became head boy at the local Cotswold grammar school and went on to Bristol University medical school, qualifying in 1952. He then carried out his National Service in the Royal Navy. While serving on a survey ship on the Arabian Gulf, the surveyors found an undiscovered sub-surface mountain. In accordance with naval tradition, the new discovery was named ‘Cobb Mountain’ after the ship’s doctor. When Nigel left the Navy, he joined his brother, who was working at the University of Toronto. Nigel passed the LMCC, the licentiate of the Medical Council of Canada, to practise in Canada, and became successful as a GP. The weekends were spent skiing, a sport he continued into his eighties. In the 1960s, Nigel returned to London, where he shared a flat off the Earls Court road with his brother. At St Mary’s Hospital Nigel was schooled as an orthopaedic surgeon under the guidance of George Bonney. He later worked at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. In 1967 he was appointed as a consultant in Northampton and began working there in 1968. When he arrived the department, then largely at Manfield Hospital, was very different to the one he left behind when he retired. His new colleagues were of an older vintage and had trained before the war: Nigel was appointed to develop new procedures such as joint surgery and joint replacements. He had great manual skills and was meticulous in his attention to detail. He liked people and really enjoyed treating children, with whom he built up excellent rapport. He persuaded one five-year-old that he was Father Christmas’s brother. This led to the little boy telling a bewildered Father Christmas in a local department store that he knew his brother. He built up a very good relationship with Edmund ‘Ted’ Sever in the provision of care to people with rheumatoid arthritis. Nigel also had a considerable medico-legal practice. It was said of him that he never exaggerated his evidence and he always stood by what he had written and said: he refused to allow his evidence to be misinterpreted or twisted by barristers in cross examination. He was said to be an impressive witness. In 1982 Nigel Cobb achieved fame. The occasion was when Barry Sheene, two-time world champion motorcyclist, careered into another bike during a warm-up for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Most people watching the fireball thought that, were Sheene to survive at all, he’d never walk again. Nigel Cobb in nearby Northampton General Hospital set about reassembling the motorcyclist’s limbs, a task that was followed in some detail by press and television. Nine weeks after an accident that had left the champion’s legs like ‘crushed eggs’, Sheene was back on his bike, a contender once more. The episode emphasised two facets of Nigel’s character: he was a likeable and charismatic figure to whom the television cameras naturally gravitated and, more consequentially, he was a brilliant and meticulous surgeon. He was known in foot and ankle circles particularly for the operation he developed in about 1979 to reconstruct the torn tibialis posterior tendon in the foot. He was reticent about writing up the operation: Basil Helal wrote about it in the end. Nigel was invited to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital to demonstrate this ‘signature’ operation. The originality of his thinking, his charisma and his ability as a lecturer ensured that he became a regular and popular member of the faculty of the hospital’s annual course in foot and ankle surgery, illustrating his talks with beautiful, hand-drawn slides. Nigel had exceptionally good manners and a delightful chuckle. He was such interesting company and would gradually reveal all sorts of unexpected interests and areas of knowledge. He could always see the amusing side of life, and was not averse to recounting jokes against himself. Over a meal once, when I was struggling with a sauce bottle, Nigel recounted having breakfast at Lyons Corner House with Sir Herbert Seddon and I think Ginger Wilson. Sir Herbert was experiencing difficulty with the viscosity of the ketchup in the bottle. Nigel took the sauce bottle to show the professor how to reduce the thickness of the sauce by shaking the bottle. Having omitted to screw the top on tight, his demonstration resulted in the professor and the adjacent tables being dosed with Heinz ketchup! In 1969, an anaesthetist, Eileen Darwood, joined the team, and in 1972 she and Nigel married. They rather startled some of the (more traditional) among their colleagues by doing things their own way and living some of the time apart. Eileen’s present to herself was a new house: she needed to be close to the hospital when on call. Nigel loved the village of Whiston, where he had built a good house and a fine garden, and this house was for times of ease when both could be there together. He owned an adjacent bungalow he used as his medico-legal office. Nigel and Eileen had a reputation for organising magnificent parties and social events, the like of which Northampton is unlikely to see again. Nigel remained in Whiston, Northampton after his retirement in 1993, where his many and eclectic interests included beekeeping, embroidery, gardening, trumpet playing, cooking and gardening. He also created stained glass. He was interested in furniture, so he took himself to John Makepeace in Dorset to learn professional cabinet making. Few men have their own highly sophisticated sewing machine and use to it with such skill, making curtains and covering cushions and sofas. The results were beautiful. His calligraphy was remarkable; he had, of course, being Nigel, gone to classes to learn this skill, and this made receiving a letter from him a great joy. He loved his budgerigars and his Shih Tzu dogs. He was an enthusiastic skier and was a member of the British Orthopaedic Study Group which met every year in Zürs, Austria, combining skiing and study, staying in the same hotel for over 50 years. Nigel used to chair the entertainment evening on the last night, persuading various senior orthopaedic surgeons to perform artistically or do silly things. For me, the sight of a well-known orthopaedic surgeon pirouetting down the aisle, wearing his wife’s shower cap and singing ‘The hippopotamus song’, will always take some beating. Nigel was real gentleman, very courteous and extremely good company. He was a hit with the ladies in the ski locker room and, as he grew older, would always manage to find a willing female assistant to fasten his ski boots for him. Unfortunately, he was late down one morning when all his usual helpers had gone and he had to do his own boots up: he skied off with his boots loose and sustained a shattered ankle. The fracture was fixed locally in Austria, but required revision surgery. I was very flattered when Nigel asked me to take this on. Although his fracture healed, he never went skiing again. Nigel died on 20 June 2018 at the age of 89 and was survived by his widow, Eileen. An abiding memory must be of a man of impeccable manners, of enormous kindness and wonderful courtesy. Hans-Jögr Trnka, president of the Austrian Foot and Ankle Society, summed it up in the email he sent following Nigel’s death, describing him as ‘One of the greats of foot and ankle surgery…’
Resource Identifier RCS: E009477
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lettin, Alan William Frederick (1931 - 2023)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Sir Barry Jackson
Publication Date 2023-02-02
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/386370386370
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Alan Lettin, one of the most distinguished orthopaedic surgeons of his generation, noted for his lifelong devotion to orthopaedic training and his commitment to the Royal College of Surgeons of England, was born in humble circumstances in the East End of London, where his father and mother ran a corner shop in Leytonstone selling groceries, stationery, tobacco and sweets. His father, Frederick, had previously been an instrument maker and, until Alan was born, his mother Louisa Marion (née Tabberer), worked for Wills Tobacco, rolling tobacco leaf to make large hand-made cigars. The more cigars she could make, the more she was paid! At the age of six, Alan started at a local primary school, walking there and back in the morning and again in the afternoon and being very unhappy. In later life, he recalled being told that if he did not attend, he would be sent to a reform school. In the early part of the Second World War, he was evacuated to Cambridgeshire, where for some months he delighted in having no schooling, spending time helping at a local farm. After the Blitz, he returned to Leytonstone and was sent to Cann Hall Primary School, where he flourished, passing the scholarship (the forerunner of the 11 plus) to Leyton County High School of Boys. Here he enjoyed sports, becoming captain of football and tennis, as well as winning several academic prizes, his most cherished being the headmaster’s prize for leadership. Having been a member of the St John Ambulance Brigade Cadets, enjoying science and having no flair for languages, he decided on applying for a place at medical school. Because of the need to live at home for financial reasons, he applied to all 12 London medical schools, but was rejected by all. However, University College had a separate entrance examination for the medical faculty and in this he was successful, starting there in 1949. He worked hard, eschewing social and sporting activities. This resulted in high marks in the second MB examinations, leading to a Medical Research Council scholarship, enabling him to pursue an honours degree in physiology (awarded in 1952), as well as a state scholarship, lasting for the duration of his clinical years. Despite the possible distraction of marriage in 1953, he won the Sir Thomas Lewis prize for clinical research in 1954 and qualified in 1955. After house appointments at University College Hospital (UCH), he entered the Royal Air Force for two years as a National Serviceman, reaching the rank of flight lieutenant. He was posted to a largely administrative job in London, which gave him the opportunity to study for the primary FRCS, which he passed at his second attempt, before being demobilised three months early to take up a casualty surgical officer’s job back at UCH. After passing the final FRCS, in 1961 he was appointed as a senior house officer at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital (RNOH), Stanmore, where he worked for Philip Newman and Charles Manning, both of whom greatly influenced him; the experience gained there confirmed his wish to pursue a career in orthopaedics. Registrar and then senior registrar posts at the main branch of RNOH followed, where he was especially influenced by Sir Herbert Seddon, who invited him to become a lecturer at the Institute of Orthopaedics. Here he made a detailed study of the effects of axial compression and internal fixation on the healing of fractures. The work was written up as a thesis for which he was awarded the MS of London University in 1967. In the same year, the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA) awarded him the Sir Robert Jones prize and gold medal for this research. It also led to visits to Paris, Lyons and Switzerland to present his findings, the first of many visits overseas. Realising his deficiency in accident surgery and the management of children’s orthopaedics, he spent time at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital, before being appointed in 1967 to a six-session consultant orthopaedic surgeon post at St Bartholomew’s Hospital with three sessions at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney. Two years later, in 1969, a consultant post at RNOH became vacant and Alan was appointed, resigning his sessions at Hackney. He remained on the staff of Barts and RNOH for the rest of his career, being involved not only with clinical work but also undertaking various management roles in both hospitals. For many years he also had honorary appointments at Doctor Barnardo’s Homes and at St Luke’s Hospital for the Clergy. Alan rapidly developed an international reputation, being in demand as a lecturer in many countries as a result of his regular publications in orthopaedic journals and textbooks, especially on joint replacement, sports injuries and the management of rheumatoid abnormalities, which were his main interests. He was an outstanding lecturer – forthright, logical, lucid and always memorable. Even as a junior, Alan had been interested in training and, soon after his appointment at Barts, he instituted a rotational training scheme in orthopaedics, something unique for its time, which allowed seamless training over four years in different hospitals, posts changing every six months. Admission to the scheme became highly sought after and over the years led to a huge number of well-trained consultants in hospitals all over the country; the scheme has since been much copied in other surgical disciplines. Unsurprisingly, his trainees worshipped him and at his retirement he was presented with a leather-bound volume containing reminiscences from more than 50 of his trainees, each with a photograph. He first became associated with the Royal College of Surgeons of England when, in 1978, he was elected a member of the Court of Examiners, in those days a small elite body of surgeons, only some 30 in number. Six years later, he was elected to the College Council, where he quickly became influential especially in relations with the British Orthopaedic Association. In the 1980s, many members of the BOA were pushing hard for a separate college of orthopaedics, something which Alan strongly opposed. Being a council member of both organisations, he was able to ensure that such a breakaway did not happen, an important decision for both institutions. He became president of the BOA in 1994. At around this time, he gave up private practice in order that he could maintain his clinical commitments to the NHS, while continuing to contribute to the development of the profession by his involvement in teaching, the College and the BOA. Alan served 12 years on the College Council, eventually becoming senior vice-president after making important contributions to innumerable committees, including the chairmanship of the fundraising executive for several years. With his long interest in teaching and training it was inevitable that he became chairman of the board of surgical training and chairman of the regional training committee. In the later part of his time on Council it became apparent that the College examinations needed radical overhaul and who better to take on this challenge as lead than Alan? He became chairman of the examination board and was hugely influential in developing the many changes that were necessary. In 1998, he gave the annual Thomas Vicary lecture, in which he described the history of the Court of Examiners, the body to which he had been elected 20 years previously. Much to his disappointment, he was unsuccessful in a fiercely contested election for presidency of the College, a post which he had long hoped to achieve. In 2022, he was elected to the Court of Patrons in recognition of his outstanding service over many years, an award that many felt long overdue. A room in the College has been named after him. Outside of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Alan was a member of the General Osteopathic Council for ten years, a founder member of the Innominate Club and a member of the Percivall Pott Club, both clubs being exclusive to orthopaedic surgeons. He was also a keen and long serving member of the Worshipful Company of Barbers of London, being elected to the court and becoming master in 1990. In retirement he moved to a 400-year-old moated timber-frame farmhouse in Suffolk and spent many hours restoring the gardens and building a summer house, a workshop and a field shelter using recycled bricks and timbers from the main house. He became a part-time sheep farmer, contracting out the management, and took an active part in local community affairs, becoming chairman of the friends of the local church. He also wrote his life story *Was it something I said?* (Stanhope, Memoir Club, 2005), a title referring to his sometimes lack of tact. Always forthright in his views, he readily acknowledged that diplomacy was not his strongest attribute. His career spanned the first 50 years of the NHS and in his memoir, he described the changes which have taken place as he personally saw them, with characteristic cogency and honesty. He remained active and alert, always wanting to know the latest College gossip, until the last few years when he developed troublesome mobility problems, something he found greatly frustrating. However, these did not prevent him from attending selected London functions using a wheelchair and Zimmer frame, but in the last few months he became increasingly frail. Alan was married to Patricia (née Plumb), a legal secretary, for over 60 years (they married in 1953 while he was still a medical student) and who predeceased him. They had four children, Jennifer, who died of a spinal tumour aged 13, Nicholas, Jonathan and Timothy. Alan died on 3 January 2023, three days short of his 92nd birthday.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010204
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lawrie, Reginald Seymour (1917 - 2011)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2012-02-13 2012-08-29
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002000-E002099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374196374196
Occupation General surgeon
Details Reginald Seymour Lawrie, always known as 'Rex', was a consultant general surgeon to Guy's Hospital from 1948 until 1977. He did much pioneering work in paediatric surgery before it became recognised as a specialty. He also worked at the Evelina Hospital, holding appointments at Sydenham Children's, Edenbridge and at Bolingbroke hospitals. He was an outstanding general surgeon whose innate modesty meant that his achievements were not as widely recognised as they deserved to be. However, as a superb teacher and mentor, his many trainees appreciated his technical skills and wide-ranging knowledge in both medicine and surgery. Rex Lawrie was born in Helensburgh, Scotland, on 22 June 1917 and came from a long line of scholars, engineers and doctors. He was particularly proud of being a direct descendant of Sir Hans Sloane, president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1718 to 1735. His father, Walter Gray Lawrie, was a Royal Engineer. His mother, Eleanor Fitzgerald Lawrie née Aitken, was a housewife. Two uncles, both Glasgow graduates, were doctors - James MacPherson Lawrie, a surgeon, and William John Lawrie, a general practitioner. Two cousins, James MacPherson Lawrie and Holland 'Robin' Hood Lawrie both graduated from Middlesex Hospital. Rex received his primary education at Temple Grove preparatory school in Eastbourne from 1927 to 1930, and then proceeded to Wellington College for a further three years, where he was a brilliant scholar. He entered Middlesex Hospital Medical School at the age of 16 to study for the first MB examination, in which he gained a distinction in physics. In the basic sciences he was greatly influenced by Tim Yeates in anatomy, Samson Wright in physiology and, later, Lionel Whitby in bacteriology. He won prizes in anatomy and physiology, obtaining the Meyerstein scholarship and Begley studentship of the Royal College of Surgeons. Rex's clinical course followed a similar academic pattern as he gained the Douglas Cree prize in medicine, the Lyell gold medal in surgery and won the Broderip scholarship. During his clinical course he was influenced by Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor and David Patey. In the final MB BS examination he obtained honours in medicine and pathology, and was awarded the London University gold medal. Qualifying shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, only a substitute medal was available because of the stringencies of wartime. The real gold one was eventually awarded in 2009, 70 years after the examination, at a ceremony specially convened by the vice-chancellor of London University. House appointments followed qualification, first at the Middlesex Hospital with E A Cockayne, then at the Brompton Hospital with G E Beaumont and Guy Scadding, and finally at the Royal Northern Hospital. During this period he passed the MRCP. He then went as a house surgeon to the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford tutored by G R Girdlestone and Sir Herbert Seddon, Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, and found time to add the MD to his already impressive list of qualifications. Under the supervision of Florey and Girdlestone, he administered penicillin intravenously to a young boy with an infected hip joint, only the third patient to be treated, and the first to have a successful result. His next step was to gain a surgical registrar post at his alma mater with David Patey and A S Blundell Bankhart, and he was successful in a third postgraduate examination, the FRCS in 1942. He then joined the RAMC, rising to the rank of major. For the next four years, initially in North Africa and then in Italy, he had duties in general surgery and orthopaedics. Later, as a specialist plastic surgeon, he was attached to the 4th maxillofacial unit under Patrick Clarkson, a New Zealander by birth who had trained at Guy's Hospital, and in plastic surgery with Sir Harold Gillies. This small pioneering unit treated serious and complex injuries, including burns, with novel surgical techniques and achieved extraordinary results. This maxillofacial unit was extremely busy during the bloody battles of Monte Cassino and managed 5,000 casualties, including 3,000 maxillofacial injuries and 1,000 burns. To cope with such large numbers, they developed novel and aggressive strategies including early primary closure of missile wounds to the face, and early excision and skin grafting of large burns. Another remarkable feature of the unit's work was the quality of their data collection, which set a standard perhaps not realised for some 60 years. Rex Lawrie was mentioned in despatches in November 1945. He wrote papers on all these aspects of military surgery in the *Lancet* ('Primary closure of battle wounds of the face' Vol.245 No.6351 pp.625-6), the *British Dental Journal* ('Treatments of 1,000 jaw fractures' 1946 Feb;80:69) and the *British Journal of Surgery* ('The management and surgical resurfacing of serious burns' 1946 Apr;34:311-23). At the end of the war he served in Austria and, on returning to the UK, at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot was consultant orthopaedic surgeon and under the supervision of Ronald Furlong. Following his demobilisation, he worked for a short time at the Middlesex Hospital, and then, in June 1948, was appointed as a consultant surgeon to Guy's Hospital and then as a paediatric surgeon to the Evelina Children's Hospital. He was an early protagonist of day-stay surgery in children, particularly those with hernias, and in 1964 wrote paper in the *Lancet* ('Operating on children as day-cases' Vol.284 No.7372 pp.1289-91) on this topic. He always maintained that one should never 'talk-down' to children, and regarded them as inexperienced adults. Were a young patient's birthday to occur while the child was in hospital, one of the cards would invariably have been signed by Rex. For his first 15 years he was first assistant to Sir Hedley Atkins, with whom he ran successful undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes, including a very popular final FRCS course. He wrote the popular Textbook of surgery (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1958) with his colleague Guy Blackburn, who had trained at Bart's but was on the staff at Guy's. He enjoyed examining in surgery as member of the Court of Examiners of the Royal College of Surgeons and also in ENT. His courteous and careful assessment of candidates was sought by the Universities of London, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and institutions abroad in Baghdad, Benghazi and Alexandria. He was a visiting fellow at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. At times, when the answer the candidate gave was wrong, he would say: 'I never considered it that way!' Perhaps his lasting legacy is the large group of trainees, many now trainers themselves, who had their surgical experience under his close supervision. Not only did Rex Lawrie have excellent technical skills, he was also able to pass these on as he assisted his juniors with a minimum of fuss and difficulty. He was unflappable and his charming manner put them at ease with the words: 'take time to secure haemostasis while opening the abdomen, as you will be tired when closing'. He remained in touch with many of them and they continued to benefit from his wise advice. Recognising that climbing the career ladder was at times unfair and nepotistic, his dictum to trainees was 'the job they were destined to get was better than all those they did not'. At surgical meetings or 'grand rounds', Rex Lawrie was not the first to stand up with his opinion. But when others had promoted at length differing methods for solving a particular problem, he would eventually be invited to express a view. This took the form of a new insight into the problem or stating one of his *bon mots* - 'I don't think the body really notices any difference.' He was great supporter of the Friday morning 'mortality meetings'. He never seemed to age with the years, remaining youthful, slim and energetic. He eschewed hospital lifts to walk up flights of stairs, his staff often being 'more out of puff' than he was. But he retired early at the age of 60 years in 1977. An idle life was not for him: he went to Brunei for five years at the request of HM the Sultan as his personal physician and was also charged with building a new hospital. His wife took care of the Sultan's wife and the children of the royal palace. In 1941 Rex Lawrie married Jean Eileen Grant, a Royal Free graduate who was born in Southern Rhodesia in 1914, but moved with her family to England some four years later. She qualified in 1938 and had their first child when Rex was serving abroad in the 1st Army in North Africa and Italy. Not only did she bring up their eldest child as a single-handed mother, she also combined this with general practice in Woburn Sands. She suffered acute paralytic poliomyelitis in 1948 and had residual disability that forced her to give up general practice. She became well-known in medical politics, but continued a clinical interest in gynaecology at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and in the community as a school doctor. She was honorary secretary of the Medical Women's Federation for 13 years, and later its president. She played a crucial role in influencing government policy to adopt flexible and part-time training, and in developing the 'retainer scheme', which enabled women to keep their hand in when family commitments were too demanding to pursue an active career. She served on the BMA council for many years and was appointed CBE in 1977. Rex and Jean's marriage was a very happy one, and their family home in Kent was a focus for many generations of medical students, graduates, contemporaries, friends and overseas visitors. Rex cared for her until she died on 14 May 2009 at the age of almost 94. Outside medicine, Rex was first and foremost a family man with a love of gardening and playing croquet. He was a member of the Junior Carlton Club from 1936 and served as chairman of Eynsford Village Society from 1964 to 1969. Of their four children, the oldest, Christina Janet Seymour Williams, followed her parents into medicine and, after training at Guy's Hospital, pursued a specialist career in rehabilitation. Alexander Grant Seymour Lawrie, the elder son, became an accountant. The second daughter, Katharine Jane Eleanor Seymour Tyler, was a personnel manager at the World Bank, and the youngest, James Cameron Fitzgerald Seymour Lawrie is treasurer at Christ Church, Oxford. The medical genes have been passed on: one granddaughter is in general practice and a second is studying medicine at Guy's, Kings and St Thomas'. Reginald Seymour (Rex) Lawrie died at home after a short illness on 15 January 2011. His four children survived him.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002013
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Ashford Hodges, William Anthony (1922 - 2011)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2012-10-17 2013-09-02
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003000-E003099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375216375216
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Anthony Ashford Hodges was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon in Great Yarmouth, Gorleston-on-Sea and Lowestoft. Very general in his approach to orthopaedic conditions, he particularly enjoyed performing joint replacements. He was a unique character, and had an unusual upbringing and an eventful life. He was born in Vienna on 24 July 1922, the only child of William Ashford Hodges, an architect, and Anna (Nitza) Bonna. William had trained in the UK, but was sent to Alexandria, Egypt, to advise on the rebuilding of Victoria College and then stayed on as chief architect to the Egyptian government. Anthony's mother was born in Turkey, the daughter of an Austrian diplomat. She was a gifted pianist and studied music at the Vienna Conservatoire, before moving with her family to Alexandria after the death of her father. There she met and married William, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Anthony's father died of pneumonia in 1925, and Nitza decided to move to Switzerland with her son. Anthony went to the English school at Chateau d'Oex, where the headmaster introduced him to lepidoptery, which remained a lifelong passion. He collected butterflies and moths from various parts of the world, particularly Tanzania. Hundreds of specimens are preserved in cabinets, still in the possession of the family. From Switzerland he went to Downside School, where his academic record was good. Although he contemplated a career as an entomologist, he went into medicine, first as an undergraduate at Downing College, Cambridge, and then for his clinical studies to the London Hospital, which bore the brunt of the German bombing of the East End. Some of his clinical training took place at Billericay Hospital, followed by stints at Brentwood and Chase Farm hospitals. He took the MRCS and LRCP examinations when he was still only 21. In 1943, while still a student, Anthony met his future wife, Joan Halliday, when they both were working at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield. She was a student nurse from the London Hospital. They married in 1944 when both were back working at the London. After house appointments at Chase Farm and Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, Anthony then moved to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital in May 1945 as a house surgeon to Herbert Alfred 'Tommy' Brittain and Ken McKee, later expressing his gratitude to both of these pioneering surgeons. He saw Brittain's work in treating the fractured neck of the femur with a trifin pin, and was able to witness his new methods of arthrodesis of the hip joint in tuberculosis as he perfected the ischiofemoral variety of fixation. McKee, on the other hand, designed a pin and plate for fixation of pertrochanteric fractures of the femur, as well as a lag screw used in arthrodesis of the hip joint. Based on his enthusiasm for taking motor-cycles and car engines to pieces and then rebuilding them, Ken McKee conceived the notion that worn out human joints could also benefit from 'spare parts', hence his original concept of metal to metal artificial hip joints that heralded a new era in the surgical treatment of disabling osteoarthritis. National Service then called, and Anthony served on a hospital ship from 1945 to 1948 as a captain in the RAMC. When demobilised he returned to the London Hospital as an orthopaedic registrar under Sir Henry Osmond-Clarke. He also did periods at Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, and St Peter's Hospital, Chertsey. He passed the FRCS in 1950 and decided to specialise in general trauma and orthopaedics. In 1952 Anthony took a job with the Colonial Service in Tanganyika. He was called a special grade medical officer and was expected to do everything from general medicine to general surgery. He became involved with two leprosy hospitals and published a paper on 'The treatment of deformities of the foot in leprosy' (*East Afr Med J* 1956 Aug;33[8]:301-3). After various postings to provincial towns around the country, he ended up in 1963 as surgical specialist in the country's then capital, Dar es Salaam. Here he was instrumental in creating and running the Muhimbili Rehabilitation Centre. In 1964 Anthony and Joan decided that they must come home for the sake of their children (Hugh, Anne, Nicholas and Gabrielle), who were all at school in England. Being out of touch with the NHS after so many years abroad, Anthony wrote to his former chief at the London Hospital, Sir Henry Osmond-Clarke, and also to Sir Herbert Seddon of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, seeking their advice. They told him to wait another year, by which time he would be in a position to apply for consultant posts and they would give their support. In February 1965, Anthony and Joan returned to the UK. Eschewing the more conventional sea voyage, they decided to travel by car, a distance of around 5,000 miles. They were accompanied by a Czech nursing sister, Jari Kolar, and travelled in two cars. For much of the time Anthony drove a small Peugeot without an operative clutch. Along the way they also had 42 punctures. The journey initially took them through Kenya, Uganda and into the Sudan, where they discovered a civil war was raging. Their visa for Sudan was torn up at the border, but they managed to persuade the authorities to let them through and drove 250 miles to Juba. On route they encountered villages with charred houses, and no sign of human or animal habitation. But they did link up with some rebels, who were very friendly, even going so far as to construct a makeshift ferry for them to make a river crossing. From the Sudan they travelled through the Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, northern Nigeria and Niger, and then across the Sahara to Algeria. They had various adventures on the way, including being stuck in sand for two days, being rescued and then helping to rescue a trans-Sahara expedition. The trio also spent some time with the French Foreign Legion in the Arak gorges. In 1966 Anthony Ashford Hodges' began his NHS consultant orthopaedic post at Great Yarmouth, Gorleston-on-Sea and Lowestoft, and continued until he retired in 1983. For much of his time working for the Great Yarmouth and Waveney Health Authority, orthopaedics was carried out at Gorleston Hospital, which was half way between Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Gorleston Hospital had originally been built at the end of the 19th century, but in 1965 a new operating suite was installed and the following year the hospital became the orthopaedic unit for the district with 23 beds. Orthopaedic emergences were treated at the main hospitals in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Prior to Anthony's appointment to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, orthopaedics was overseen by consultants from Norwich. David Burgess joined him in 1972 and together they started to build a department of orthopaedics. Anthony was always full of enthusiasm, cheerful and keen to listen and learn. He was good at DIY and on one occasion when an instrument was not available for an operation, he left the theatre, drove home and obtained the necessary part from his workshop! He had monocular vision for much of his later adult life, having had surgery for a melanoma in 1972 at Moorfields Hospital, somewhat delayed in its diagnosis. This did not impair his handling of bones and joints, nor his energetic outside pursuits of sailing in the North Sea and further afield, and gardening. Presumably short of excitement in the NHS, in 1974 Anthony took a two-year sabbatical to work as surgeon superintendent at the Vila Base Hospital in the New Hebrides, a small Melanesian country in the South Pacific, now called Vanuatu. Joan and Anthony bought a 46 ft ferro-concrete ketch, in which they had many enjoyable and hair-raising trips around the islands, until the end of Anthony's tour, when they decided to sail the boat back to the UK. They got as far as Papua New Guinea and were in the process of negotiating the Torres Strait, a well-known hazard, when they holed the vessel on the edge of a reef and had to paddle ashore to a nearby island, where they were rescued. After the loss of his boat in the Torres Strait, Anthony immediately bought a 45 ft ketch (with a steel hull this time) and worked on it in his garden in Norfolk until he retired from the NHS in 1983. He and Joan then set sail for the Bahamas and spent a year living on the boat in the Caribbean. The return journey was extremely hazardous: they ran into a hurricane and only narrowly escaped. For several years following his retirement, he did a number of locums around the country, as well as some medico-legal work, but it did not dim his adventurous spirit. In 1986, now aged 64, he and Joan embarked on their final sailing adventure. They planned to sail back to East Africa via the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Clutch trouble occasioned an enforced stop in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where they were held at gunpoint by the Saudi authorities, as they had no visa. Fortuitously their son-in-law was just coming to the end of a diplomatic posting in Saudi Arabia and he managed to get them released. Within a day of setting sail though, they had grounded the yacht on an uncharted reef and were stuck for 10 days. After jettisoning almost everything on board, they got the boat afloat and limped into Port Sudan. The boat was shipped back the UK and repaired! Thereafter, they decided to confine their sailing adventures to the Mediterranean, leaving their boat in Bodrum in the south western region of Turkey: they spent four months each year sailing around the southern Med. When the boat was sold, they decided to settle for a quieter lifestyle, first in Norfolk and then Thaxted in Essex, but this did not stop them travelling to their beloved Tanzania in 2005 and to Australia in 2007, when Anthony went snorkelling on the Barrier Reef. Anthony Ashford Hodges died on 2 September 2011, aged 89. Perhaps his death notice, published in the national newspapers, best sums up his life: 'Orthopaedic surgeon, sailor, adventurer and friend of Africa and passionate gardener, adored husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather of a family running to keep up.'
Resource Identifier RCS: E003033
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sweetnam, Sir David Rodney (1927 - 2013)

2025-07-26T12:52:08Z

by Michael Edgar
Publication Date 2013-06-12 2014-01-24
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004000-E004099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376277376277
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Sir Rodney Sweetnam was undoubtedly the doyen of orthopaedic surgery of his generation. He had many talents. Foremost, he was a natural surgeon, gifted with great operative dexterity. He was also a pioneer in the research and management of bone tumours, and, thirdly, was an outstanding committee chairman and strategist. His sprightly manner and careful but resolute decision making were balanced by a warm and sensitive personality, and a youthful sense of humour. Sir Rodney Sweetnam was elected president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1995, only the second orthopaedic surgeon after Sir Harry Platt to have achieved this position. He became a leading light in the organisation of the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA) and in the management of the *British Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery*, as well as being orthopaedic surgeon to HM the Queen, civilian consultant to the Army and consultant adviser to the Department of Health. Sir Rodney was born into a medical family. His father, William, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, was a well-respected general practitioner in Wimbledon. His mother, Irene née Black, was a medical student prior to her marriage. Although he was named David Rodney Sweetnam at birth, his mother was told on his first day at nursery school that there were too many 'Davids' and thereafter he became 'Rodney'. He was educated at Pembroke House Preparatory School and Clayesmore School, Dorset, where he evidently enjoyed his schooldays, as judged by his recent reminiscences in their school magazine (although he commented elsewhere that he did not excel at school). Towards the end of the Second World War he recalled a Lancaster bomber crash landing in the school field. He and a group of prefects ran to see if they could help the airmen trapped in the burning wreckage, but, whilst the others ran to the flames, he was more cautious. He wrote that he then realised that he was not a brave man (he failed to mention that years later he received a bravery award from the Metropolitan Police for saving the lives of two officers trapped in a crashed fire-ravaged patrol car). It would seem that wartime school teaching was not always of the highest standard, and Rodney's father coached him in the study of Latin, then a necessary prerequisite for Oxbridge entry. He had little interest in sport either at school or later in life, but always enjoyed exercise, especially brisk walking. He was company sergeant major of the school cadet corps. Rodney entered Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1945 as a titular scholar (later to be made an honorary fellow in 2003). He remarked that for the first time he started to take his studies seriously and, as a consequence, he took a first in the natural sciences tripos, gaining his BA in 1947. He attended the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London, for his clinical course, qualifying MB BChir in 1950. He then completed two years National Service as a surgeon lieutenant in the Royal Navy, where he served on the battleship and flagship HMS *Vanguard*, regretting that he just missed its Royal tour to South Africa, but not regretting that he managed to stay outside the Korean War zone! Rodney gained his FRCS diploma in 1955 and embarked on his specialty training in orthopaedics. He worked under many of the great orthopaedic surgeons of the day, including Philip Wiles and Philip Newman at the Middlesex, Sir Reginald Watson-Jones and (Sir) Henry Osmond-Clarke at the London and Sir Herbert Seddon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. Rodney was appointed as a consultant at the Middlesex Hospital in 1960, aged 32, replacing Philip Wiles, who in his time had carried out the world's first total hip replacement (in 1938) and had worked alongside Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor in his management of bone tumours. With Philip Newman, Rodney Sweetnam created a very happy and efficient orthopaedic unit. He was one of the very few consultants to run a Saturday morning fracture clinic, which he kept up until his retirement. Following on from Philip Wiles, Rodney continued to develop a major interest in bone tumours. Working with Sir Stanford Cade, the pioneering radiologist and radiotherapist, he demonstrated in a series of adolescent lower limb bone sarcomas that local radiotherapy followed six months later by amputation, providing the patient was free of detectable metastases, led to a similar if not slightly better survival rate (then only 20%). Thereby, untimely amputation compounding a tragic terminal illness in an adolescent was largely avoided. This study was awarded the Jacksonian prize in 1966 and he presented his work as Hunterian Professor in 1967. The subsequent development of massive replacement prostheses with John Scales from Stanmore enabled radical tumour excision to be achieved with limb salvage, even in cases of hemipelvectomy, thereby avoiding the mutilation of Gordon-Taylor's hindquarter amputation. This technique was probably Rodney's most notable achievement and one which, combined with steadily improving chemotherapy regimens, vastly improved both life expectancy and quality. He wrote some pivotal papers on this work and gave the Gordon-Taylor, Stanford Cade, Bradshaw and Robert Jones lectures. In the generality of orthopaedics he wrote three small but useful and well-received text-books, two written with Philip Wiles (*Essentials of orthopaedics* fourth edition, London, J & A Churchill, 1965 and *Fractures, dislocations and sprains* London, J & A Churchill, 1969) and one written with Sean Hughes (*Basis and practice of orthopaedics* Heinemann Medical, 1980). Rodney chaired the MRC working party on bone sarcoma from 1980 to 1985. Earlier, he was appointed chairman of the Department of Health's advisory group on orthopaedic implants (1973 to 1981). Interestingly, his committee recommended that all new joint and other implants should be subject to a trial period of surveillance before general release to orthopaedic surgeons. However, the Department of Health took no further action. Rodney later commented that had the Department implemented this, many implant failures might have been avoided, such as the 1998 3M Capital hip fiasco (when a hip implant failed and tracing patients proved difficult). He subsequently became a consultant adviser in orthopaedic surgery to the Department of Health (from 1981 to 1990). Rodney joined the council of management of the British edition of the *Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery* (now the *Bone and Joint Journal*) in 1975, becoming secretary/treasurer later that year. He held this position for 17 years in partnership with David Evans of the Westminster Hospital as chairman. During this period the journal achieved world status. Rodney then took over the chairmanship on David Evan's retirement in 1992. Under Rodney's shrewd leadership and with adequate funds in reserve the council of the *Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery* made the bold decision to withdraw from its inadequate offices at the Royal College of Surgeons and become independent by purchasing freehold premises in Buckingham Street, a decision fully justified with time. Rodney also had a close relationship with the British Orthopaedic Association, serving as secretary from 1972 to 1973 (when he was also secretary to the orthopaedic section of the Royal Society of Medicine) and as BOA president in 1985 to 1986. He was awarded an honorary fellowship of the BOA in 1998. He was elected to the council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1985, becoming vice president from 1992 to 1994 and president from 1995 to 1998. Contrary to his views about the journal, he came to the opinion that the BOA, representing the largest surgical sub-specialty, should remain firmly within the RCS as an influential body. Apart from being on the consultant staff of the Middlesex Hospital from 1960 to 1992 (where he was chairman of the medical advisory committee to the board of governors from 1971 to 1972), Rodney also served on the staff of King Edward VII Hospital, London, from 1964 to 1997. He was an honorary consultant to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, consultant to the Royal Hospital Chelsea and an honorary civil consultant to the Army. He was president of the Combined Services Orthopaedic Society from 1983 to 1986. Among his many other distinctions, Rodney was appointed orthopaedic surgeon to HM The Queen and the Royal Household in 1982, a post he held for ten years, with a commitment to ensure that he was almost always available if needed. Reputedly, when the Queen phoned him he always stood to answer. During an early visit to Buckingham Palace, some junior members of the Household secreted several valuable ornaments into his Gladstone bag, which fortunately he noticed just in time before leaving the Royal suite. He was made a CBE in 1990 and was knighted in 1992. Outside medicine, Rodney served as a trustee of the Smith and Nephew (charitable) Foundation and of the Newman Foundation. He was director and vice chairman of the Permanent Insurance Company, and director of the Medical Sickness Annuity and Life Assurance Society. Rodney came to love 'The Middlesex Hospital' dearly (he always insisted on a capital 'T' for 'the'). For him and many other colleagues it embodied the highest standards of teaching and clinical practice in a disciplined, yet friendly atmosphere within its multi-specialty setting. He epitomised this ethos and viewed orthopaedics as best developed within a multi-specialty context. The many past trainees, nurses and physiotherapists who worked with him at the Middlesex will always remember the many orthopaedic department alumni or 'snowball' gatherings, in which Rodney was the central figure, reflecting the affection and admiration with which he was regarded. Rodney was part of a close knit family. His lovely wife Pat was a nursing sister at the Middlesex and his daughter Sarah also trained in nursing there. David, his son, qualified at the Middlesex, following him into orthopaedic surgery. He described his happy domestic life as 'a perfect marriage to the daughter of a surgeon, a daughter who became a Middlesex Hospital nurse like her mother and a son who became an orthopaedic surgeon like his father!' Rodney enjoyed working in the garden, but was more interested in scaling trees with a chain saw than tending to weeds and flower beds; he personally dug the hole for the swimming pool in his garden. In *Who's who* he described himself as a 'garden labourer' in deference to Pat's horticultural talents. Her declining mental health in his last few years, for which he gave her considerable support, greatly saddened him, second only to which was the closure of the Middlesex. His life is an extraordinary record of accomplishment. Rodney was tireless. He was nearly always first in the consultant car park at the Middlesex, having commuted down the M1. Visiting his private patients first, he then digested *The Times* in the consultants' sitting room or King Edward VII's library, being ready for his NHS commitment by 8.00-8.15am. Patients were bemused to see him on the ward before they were properly awake. Although not interested in sport, he enjoyed exercise and remained slim and spare throughout his life. He walked extremely fast for long distances. Ward rounds were conducted at speed, those attending being strewn behind him as he ran up five flights of stairs. His perambulations six times each day around Lincoln's Inn Fields when president were legendary. Rodney had a quick and intuitive intellect. He saw through humbug with alacrity. He was a brilliant chairman, keen to make decisions and avoid being side-tracked. Besides being a very deft and skilful surgeon, he was an incomparable mentor, giving time to teach and counsel his junior colleagues, sharing a life-long interest in their careers and supporting all those who were conscientious and worked hard. His many hand-written letters offering congratulation or commiseration have become valued mementoes. Rodney had his bête noires, a major one being those smelling strongly of garlic. Many remember that it was an unwise orthopaedic registrar indeed who would risk turning up to assist Sir Rodney having eaten garlic the night before. Rapid departure from the theatre was assured. A note tacked to the back of the presidential dinner chair at the Royal College of Surgeons read simply: 'No garlic'. He also despised tardiness in any form. Yet these strong dislikes were tempered by a ready sense of humour, with a gift for swift repartee and a broad knowledge of all that went on in the world. Sir Rodney Sweetnam died on 17 May 2013, aged 86, and was survived by his wife Pat and his son and daughter.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004094
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset