History of The BAPRAS Collection
The 1980's
The BAPRAS Collection started life back in April 1981 when Antony Wallace, then the Secretary of BAPS, and Maurice Kinmonth, the President, discussed the idea. Tony Wallace agreed to act as official archivist and began to accumulate material. Small exhibitions at the winter meetings of 1981 to 85, enabled him to collect more.
Lady Gillies donated many photographs and more significantly was able to detail the events and put names to them. Wallace published his history of plastic surgery in 1982 “Progress of Plastic Surgery” and together with John Barron a history of the first 40 years of BAPS in March 1985.
In 1987 Wallace suffered a stroke, leaving him quite disabled but his faculties intact.
The 1990's and 2000's
In 1990 Wallace enlisted the help of Charles Chapman and David Elliot. Subsequently David Ross, with a diploma in the history of medicine contributed as Assistant Archivist until his clinical work intervened. He was succeeded in 1998 by past Presidents Phil Sykes and Brian Morgan. Phil Sykes stepped back in 2000 having moved too far from London and partly to write his “A History of Plastic Surgery” published in 2007 with co-author Paolo Santoni-Rugiu.
In 2003 Brian Morgan arranged transfer of the artefacts, documents and images from Wallace’s consulting rooms in Portland Place to the storeroom of the then BAPS office at the Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In 2005 that the Antony Wallace Archive was officially opened in the presence of Tony Wallace himself.
Brian Morgan made a considerable contribution, overseeing the continual growth of the archive through donations, while facilitating loans of instruments and artwork for exhibitions.
The 2010's
In 2011, the extensive Gillies Archive of documents and artefacts, rescued and put together after their discovery at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup by Rheumatologist Dr Andrew Bamji, was forced to close. Much of the material was donated to BAPRAS and Dr Bamji became, and remains, the BAPRAS Gillies Archivist and honorary member of the Association. He is perhaps the world’s foremost authority on Harold Gillies and author of the 2017 book “Faces from the Front”.
Brian Morgan was the longest serving Archivist, continuing until the end of 2014 and much after the Association became BAPRAS in 2006. Roger Green, a past President and Secretary of the Association, then took up the mantle. He too made significant contributions to the Archive, amongst many achievements editing and publishing “BAPS to BAPRAS The History of the Association 1996-2016”, on its 70th anniversary.
Roger used his encyclopaedic knowledge of plastic surgery history to lecture and make connections worldwide. He also devoted much time to managing decantation of the archive out of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2017 whilst the building was extensively redeveloped.
The 2020's
Martin Coady was appointed Honorary Archivist in January 2021, at a time of major transition for the Archive. A new professional Archive Coordinator was appointed shorty after and since the Royal College redevelopment was now complete, all the archives and artefacts required moving back into the new BAPRAS offices. It was also recognised that our accumulated artefacts, documents and audio-visual material now constituted more of a Collection than a pure document archive.
The Archive was thus renamed and re-branded “The BAPRAS Collection” in late 2021, with an Honorary Curator and Collection Coordinator. A lack of physical space in which to display the Collection and restricted access to it has led to this “Virtual Museum”, launched in October 2024.