Robert Jones, Gathorne Girdlestone and excision arthroplasty of the hip.

©2005 British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery doi:10.1302/0301-620X.87B1. 15188 $2.00 J Bone Joint Surg [Br] 2005;87-B:104-6. Gathorne Girdlestone was born in Oxford in 1881. He was educated at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford and trained at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. In 1910 he joined a surgical practice near Oswestry. He met Robert Jones and began visiting patients with him at the small hospital at Baschurch, nearby, which later became the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital. He then gave up general surgery and joined the staff of this hospital to work with Jones. They were to remain very close friends until Sir Robert’s death in 1933. At the beginning of the Great War in 1914 Sir Robert was asked by the War Office to