Harold Arthur Thomas Fairbank

Harold Arthur Thomas Fairbank, later Sir Thomas Fairbank, was the son of Thomas Fairbank (1843-1880), a general practitioner in Windsor. He qualified in medicine at the Charing Cross Hospital in 1898 and planned to become a facio-maxillary surgeon and obtained a diploma in dentistry. After serving as a volunteer in the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, he trained in surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street and in 1906 he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon to the Charing Cross Hospital.

He married Florence Kathleen Ogilvie in 1909.

In 1915, during World War I, he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Greece. After war service he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon at King’s College Hospital, London, where he remained until he retired in 1936. In 1939, however, he was called to war service once again, now to supervise the orthopaedic section of the emergency medical services. After the war he had a consulting practice in Harley Street for some years. Fairbank was President of the British Orthopaedic Association 1926-1927.

We thank Patrick Jucker-Kupper, Switzerland, for information submitted.

• Increased and decreased density of bone, with special reference to fibrosis of the marrow.
  The Robert Jones Lecture, 1938.
• An Atlas of General Affections of the Skeleton.
  Edinburgh, Livingstone, 1951.
  Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins, 1951.
  
  Obituaries/biographical:
• The Medical Who's Who 1914. London [1914]
• Orthopaedic Surgeons of To-Day: Sir H. A. Thomas Fairbank, D.S.O., M.S., F.R.C.S., M.Ch.Orth. (Hon.)
  N. C.
  Journal of bone and joint surgery. British volume, 1948, 30-B 377-382.
• The Lancet, 1961, I: 566.
• The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 1961, 43: 595.