James Kirby was a consultant dental surgeon at Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham. He was born on 30 November 1913 in Walsall, Staffordshire. His father, Alexander Claude Kirby, a printer’s apprentice and compositor, who served in the First World War as a second lieutenant with the 1/5th Battalion Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) Regiment, was killed in action on 24 July 1918. His mother, Willametta Kirby née Mayo, the daughter of a house painter and a warehouse clerk before she married, died in 1924 when Kirby was still a young child. His paternal grandfather, Ernest William Kirby, was a printer and publisher and a successful businessman. Kirby passed his school certificate in July 1930 and went on to study dentistry at the University of Birmingham. He qualified with his LDS in 1936. In 1939 he married Margaret Evans and in the 1939 England and Wales Register they were listed as living in Wellington, Shropshire. In the 1942 Dental Register his address was given as Oakengates, Shropshire. He became a consultant at Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham. He gained his fellowship of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1951. Kirby died on 30 December 2004 at the age of 91. His son notified the College of his father’s death.