John Grocott: Stoke's Unsung WWII Plastic Surgeon
"Johnny G" led the first plastic surgery unit outside of London, and treated hundreds of seriously injured servicemen throughout WWII and in the aftermath of D-Day.
On this day, which marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the UK will remember one of the most important dates in British history, as well as some of the people who lived, worked and fought during the Second World War.
Many of them are well-known. Some became heroes. And some were deemed to have jobs so important to the war effort that they were exempt from military service.
One of those was Stoke-on-Trent’s John Grocott, a man who led the first plastic surgery unit outside of London, and treated hundreds of seriously injured servicemen throughout WWII and in the aftermath of D-Day.
Someone who, having mastered a new surgical speciality, could restore, reconstruct or alter a human body - having had the benefit of working alongside the world-renowned father of modern plastic surgery, Sir Harold Gillies.
Unheralded and largely unknown for decades, it’s only now - following the launch of a new book, and on the eve of ‘D-Day+80’ - that Grocott’s own genius in helping to rebuild the lives of so many seriously injured servicemen might finally be acknowledged.
There’s already a growing movement to include him in Stoke-on-Trent’s Hall of Fame, alongside the likes of football’s Sir Stanley Matthews; author Arnold Bennett; Spitfire inventor Reginald Mitchell; and potter Josiah Wedgwood.
But the story here isn’t so much why the amazing “Johnny G”, as the nurses called him, has been forgotten. It’s more about the life he lived - and, crucially, the number of lives he affected.
Born in 1910, the lad from Fenton was a standout schoolboy at Orme Boys’ School in Newcastle-under-Lyme and at Longton High School, where he won the £200 Guy’s Hospital Medical School War Memorial Scholarship (about £13,000 in today’s money) for Chemistry and Biology.
He returned to Stoke-on-Trent as a House Surgeon at the NSRI at about the same time Gillies was developing a private practice with his cousin, Archibald McIndoe.
The key figure in introducing Grocott to Gillies and McIndoe was the President of the Infirmary Board, Eric Young, a visionary who had all the right connections to help raise funds for the NSRI in the days before the NHS. One of the items highest on his wish list was a plastic surgery unit under the authority of his great friend Gillies.
From 1934 Sir Harold would visit the Infirmary every month, with Grocott meeting him at Stoke railway station and driving him to see a clinic of patients. Grocott first learned his plastic surgery skills from Gillies, and then from McIndoe who was destined to become more famous than his teacher.
By the outbreak of WWII, Grocott was singlehandedly running the plastic surgery centre in Stoke-on-Trent, and was recruited into the Emergency Medical Service soon after.
Throughout the war, he averaged around 350 plastic operations a year - rebuilding jaws, mouths, cheeks, and creating eyelids, noses and ears.
Grocott eventually left the North Staffs Royal Infirmary in 1975 without fuss, or fanfare - retiring quietly to a life of working on his beloved cars, keeping finches and grafting orchids with all the skill and precision which made him such a remarkable figure in the early days of modern plastic surgery.
A hero in many peoples’ books - and even a war hero to others - Grocott’s own fame faded over time to the point where, today, few people remember his achievements. Apart from his former patients, for whom the universal question appears to be, “How do you say ‘Thank You’ to someone who has made my life worth living?”.
Maybe this new book, and the 80th anniversary of D-Day, will make a difference.
And maybe the lad from Fenton, “the amazing Johnny G”, who has already spent far too long in the shadows, will finally be welcomed into Stoke-on-Trent’s Hall of Fame.
Thank you James for sharing this story. Archibald McIndoe is a relative of my husband and one of the reasons our eldest is an Archie!