Mollie Lentaigne

• Name — Mollie Lentaigne • Birth Name — Mary Evelyn Lentaigne • Born — 6 May 1920 • Birthplace — Simla, British India • Died — 29 April 2024 • Place of death — Harare, Zimbabwe • Occupation — Medical artist, Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse • Years Active — World War II • Father — Edward Charles Lentaigne • Mother — Cecilia Mary Lentaigne • Children — 6 • Known for — Illustrations of surgical procedures performed on injured servicemen

Lentaigne was born on 6 May 1920, the elder daughter of Lt. Col. Edward Charles Lentaigne DSO and Cecilia Mary Lentaigne (Bunbury) in Simla, British India. Her brother, second lieutenant John Wilfred O'Neill Lentaigne MC of the Rifle Brigade, died in 1942 at El Alamein. In 1955, she married Timothy Ingram Lock in Harare, then Salisbury, Rhodesia. They had four sons and two daughters. Lentaigne came from a family with several distinguished medical ancestors. These include her grandfather, Sir John Vincent Lentaigne (1855–1915), who was an Irish surgeon and president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland between 1908 and 1910. Sir John was himself the grandson of the surgeon Benjamin Lentaigne who was born in France in 1773, but, as a Royalist and firm supporter of King Louis XVI, was forced to escape to England at the age of nineteen. He went on to earn a medical qualification in England and join the British Army. He was posted to the Dublin barracks in 1775, and was involved in the treatment of Wolfe Tone, the leader of the 1798 Irish Rebellion, during his imprisonment and the final days of his life. • Illustration — Lentaigne's drawing of a Thiersch graft to the right side of a lip • Illustration — Archibald McIndoe operating at East Grinstead: painting by Anna Katrina Zinkeisen, 1944 • Illustration — Queen Victoria Hospital in 2005

During the Second World War, Lentaigne worked as a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, West Sussex, where her duties included drawing the experimental operations of Archibald McIndoe and his fellow surgeons. She needed to work quickly in the operating theatre and so used pencil but subsequently added ink and colour to some of her work. Her drawings have uncovered material on the Guinea Pig Club, a club formed of Archibald McIndoe's surgical patients, many of whom were severely burned Royal Air Force pilots and aircrew.