How it started

"What do you chaps think about forming a Plastic Club?" - Harold Gillies

Early in 1944, although arguably “home” to Plastic Surgery as an organised specialty since the First World War, the UK still lacked a national unifying organisation to guide it. Joint meetings were occasionally held however, and relatively easy to organise, since there remained only four real “leaders” in the specialty. The so-called “Big Four” of Harold Gillies, Thomas Kilner, Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem.

The existing wartime plastic surgery units had been given special supplies of the new, and highly rationed antibiotic “wonder-drug”– penicillin to make clinical assessments of its usefulness. It was already reducing infections and transforming the prospects of patients subject to the bombs and V weapons being thrown at major cities that winter. But it was so new that its use was essentially research. Plastic surgeons rapidly acquired unique experience with penicillin, so it was decided to convene a meeting to discuss and pool any lessons learnt by using it. This was hosted by Mowlem’s unit at Hill End Hospital, St Albans.

24 plastic surgeons gathered to present their experiences. This was followed, as was the custom, by a sit-down lunch which included whale meat steaks – a choice probably

influenced by wartime rationing of meat. After the meal they all went outside to enjoy the weak winter sunshine. During a stroll in the grounds, Sir Harold Gillies, no doubt puffing on his ubiquitous cigarette, addressed the assembled company with an idea he had been harbouring for some time. “What do you chaps think about forming a Plastic Club?”.

Immediately determined to be a “good idea”, it was perhaps an overdue development. Then as now, the chiefs gave the task of developing a time-consuming idea of producing a report and draft Constitution to a committee of their subordinates. Six “second generation” British Plastic Surgeons were chosen, Percy Jayes, James Cuthbert, Emlyn Lewis, Peter Reidy, Rowland Osborne and John Barron as their Secretary.

However, that summer of 1944, the Second World War began to reach its culmination with the D Day invasion of Europe. The casualties and injuries resulting delayed matters until the end of 1946. Alfred, later Lord, Webb Johnson, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, agreed to take the new Association under its wing. 40 plastic surgeons gathered at the College for an inaugural meeting on 20th November that year. The report and Constitution being agreed, the new British Association of Plastic Surgeons came into being under the Presidency of Sir Harold Gillies himself.  A governing Council of six officers was also chosen.

Only in 2006 did BAPS change its name to BAPRAS, The British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons.

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