Robert Herbert Mills-Roberts

Born in the Welsh village of Ffestiniog in 1862, Mills-Roberts was educated at the Friars School in Bangor, and Aberystwyth College. After this, he proceeded to St. Thomas's Hospital, took MRCS and LRCP diplomas in 1887 and was elected a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh on 16th May 1893.

However, before his surgical career even took off, Mills-Roberts had already established himself as one of the UK’s finest goalkeepers. Playing both football and rugby while studying at St Thomas's, he became an international in the former in 1885 when he made the first of eight appearances for Wales. Two years later he was approached to play as an amateur for Preston North End in their FA Cup ties. Ironically, PNE at the time had become synonymous with hiring professionals from Scotland, earning the team Mills-Roberts joined the nickname of “The Scotch Professors”. That side were FA Cup finalists in 1888 and the following season won the league and FA Cup ‘double’ with Mills-Roberts not conceding a goal in any tie in the latter tournament.

He retired from football in 1890 to concentrate on his medical career. After serving as house-surgeon to Stroud Hospital and Birmingham General Hospital, he practised at Llanberis in north-west Wales until the outbreak of World War I, during which he was second in command of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He was transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps and as lieutenant-colonel commanded the 131st Field Ambulance from 1915 to 1918, earning a mention in dispatches for his service in France. After demobilisation he was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Medical Services under the Ministry of Pensions and served in this capacity in North Wales and Shropshire from 1919 to 1924.

Robert Herbert Mills-Roberts died in Bournemouth in November 1935. He was described in his British Medical Journal obituary as “a quiet and unassuming man with a charming personality, his retiring nature seldom brought him to the limelight, yet for all that he had a sterling aptitude for making fast friends, and of this generation many still live.”