Guy Harrison Baines

• Dr. Guy Baines

A friend and contemporary surgeon to Dr. John Herbert Hicks.

The following details are from Dr. Baines' obituary written by Royal College of Surgeons of England.
[Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England, Brit med J 1985, 290, 405]

Guy Harrison Baines was born on 16 September 1911 at the Vicarage, St Helens, Lancashire, where his father Albert Baines, a Cambridge graduate, was a clerk in Holy Orders and later archdeacon of Halifax. His mother Mabel (née Harrison) came from Liverpool. After early education at Mostyn House, Parkgate, he went to Charterhouse where he became head of his house and represented his school at football, boxing, athletics and swimming. At St John's College, Cambridge, he secured an honours degree in natural sciences in 1932 and became demonstrator in anatomy and physiology. He was president of the University Medical Society and gained blues for boxing and swimming before becoming Hector Mackenzie Exhibitioner at St Thomas's Hospital in 1933. After qualifying in 1936 he held resident surgical posts at his teaching hospital and took the primary FRCS before moving in 1939 to the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, where he was surgical registrar and resident surgical officer while completing the final Fellowship in 1939. He joined the RAMC in 1943, becoming a surgical specialist in the First Airborne Division with which he served in North Africa, Sicily and Italy and was then transferred to Burma. There, with a mobile surgical unit, he took part in the Arakan campaign before returning to hospital and field surgical units in NW Europe. After VE day he commanded hospitals at Sandbostel and Belsen concentration camps before becoming officer in charge of the surgical division at No 25 General Hospital. He there met Janet Douglas Ward, a physiotherapist, whom he married just after the war.

In December 1945, just before his demobilisation, Guy Baines was appointed assistant surgeon to the Queen Elizabeth and Children's Hospitals in Birmingham, and surgeon to the Guest Hospital, Dudley. He rapidly built up a large practice in general surgery, with a special interest in urology, and eventually devoted himself entirely to urology. He published valuable papers on ectopic ureter, nephrocalcinosis and abacterial pyuria and became an active and popular member of the British Association of Urological Surgeons. A man of strong and handsome appearance, a conservative but skilful surgeon, his courtesy, charm and kindly consideration for his patients caused him to be in constant demand. Shortly after their marriage he and his wife settled on a 100 acre farm in Worcestershire, where they raised a family of four children and kept a fine dairy herd. After suffering a myocardial infarct in 1970 he sold the farm but continued with his surgical work until normal retiring age in 1976 when he took up market gardening and served on medical tribunals. He loved the country life but later suffered increasing cardiac disability until his sudden death on 13 December 1985, aged 73. An unselfish and generous man of assertive character, his cheerful temperament and wide interests made him an excellent colleague and staunch friend. He was survived by his wife and by his two sons, Robert and Michael, and two daughters, Rachel-Claire and Julie-Anne.

Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS 1936
FRCS 1939
BA Cambridge 1932
MA MB BCh 1936
LRCP 1936

Created: 11 August 2026, C. Kemnitz

• English

• Latin

Royal College of Surgeons of England. (2015). Baines, Guy Harrison (1911 - 1985). In Plarr's Lives of the Fellows. https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/lives/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ASSET$002f0$002fSD_ASSET:379280/one