Creating the Journal

“Wally, I think you are the only person in our Association to start a journal.” -Harold Gillies

The idea for a periodical of plastic surgery was not an invention of BAPS. At the end of 1918, Gillies attempted to raise money from the Ministry of Information with which he hoped to launch a plastic surgery journal describing advances in the “strange new art”. He wanted it to mirror the theme of his forthcoming textbook, and also to be called “Plastic Surgery of the Face”. Despite showing the Ministry a “dummy copy”, Gillies was unsuccessful. 

It would be some 30 years later, after the formation of the Association, before the idea was revived. Harold Gillies had a habit of making apparently off-the-cuff suggestions, which proved to be both well-thought through and with long term foresight. His comment above in late 1946 was made to Antony Wallace, a consultant in Edinburgh. Gillies saw him as able, and independent of the influences which could be applied by colleagues in the South.   

Whilst a Journal was seen by many on Council as a focal point and stimulus for the Association, some felt that it was too great a financial risk for an Association at that stage comprising only 56 full members. One thousand copies of a journal comprising 60 pages, would at the time cost £300, but bring in £150 from advertising. Ultimately, the proposed publishers, E & S Livingstone, agreed to bear any loss for the first two years of publication, and an agreement was signed in 1949 by Gillies himself, alongside Professor T. Pomfret Kilner and Mr A.B Wallace. 

The first issue appeared in March 1948. Tony Wallace, as well as being originator and first Archivist of the BAPS, did became Editor, serving until 1968.