Sidney Pappworth

Former consultant orthopaedic surgeon Northern General Hospital, Sheffield (b Liverpool 1911; q Liverpool 1933; MCh Orth), d 30 November 2000. He was born Sidney Paperovitch, the eighth of nine children of Jewish immigrants. His eldest brother, who became a barrister, supported the younger children through school and university. Sidney trained as an orthopaedic surgeon, studying under the acknowledged founder of modern orthopaedic surgery, Sir Robert Jones. During the second world war, Sidney enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, having survived the bombing of the Northern Hospital in Liverpool. He was operating at the time, and the two surgeons with whom he was working were both killed, but he escaped with minor injuries. He also survived a shipwreck on the river Mersey. After the war, he went to Sheffield, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was an acute observer of the effects of social change on the injuries he treated and he often pointed out a dramatic decline in the number of hip fractures he saw. Postwar prosperity meant that most people could afford bathrooms and consequently elderly people did not run the …