6'0" 11st.
b. Poulton le Fylde 28 April 1902
d. Alderley Edge 18 April 1969
 

Debut  15 March 1924 (21y 321d)
CAREER: Baines GS;Manchester University;Manchester City;Northern Nomads;Blackburn Rovers Apr'22-'24;Northern Nomads;London Caledonians ’28;Northern Nomads ‘30.
ENGLAND AMATEUR 2 apps ’27 v Wal,Ire.
 

FL     1 app

Fairbrother was signed on amateur terms after being spotted for the leading amateur side the Northern Nomads. A son of  T W Fairbrother, a partner in the architectural firm Fairbrother and Hall, he was the nephew of the Rovers director J P Eddleston JP. On his debut he was surprisingly creative although he was criticised for over-enthusiasm and had to leave the field with a knee injury. As a qualified doctor he found that it was impossible to combine his work with playing for the Rovers, but returned to play with the Northern Nomads where he won an amateur cup winners' medal and two amateur international caps. He was  described as “has deftness of touch, feeds his forwards well and is a dangerous shot anywhere within thirty yards of goal.” He moved to work in London in 1928 and played for London Caledonians in the Isthmian League but resumed playing for the Nomads when he came back to work in the department of clinical pathology at the Manchester Royal Institute. He studied at Manchester University graduating MB, ChB with a distinction in obstetrics in 1923. After appointments at the Royal Infirmary and Monsall Hospital for infectious diseases he entered the laboratory of Manchester Royal Infirmary. With a travelling scholarship he worked with Sir Almroth Wright at St Mary’s hospital in London and at the Institute Pasteur in Paris where he worked with Professor Besredka on the antigenic structure of Vibrio Cholerae. He continued this work thanks to a research fellowship from the Lister Institute of preventive Medicine. He presented an MD thesis on Cholera in 1928. In 1930 he returned to Manchester to work in the university department of bacteriology and preventive medicine and started research into poliomyelitis and vaccinia virus.  He combined this with work as assistant director of the Public Health Laboratory until 1938, when he was appointed director of the clinical laboratory at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1933 and a fellow in 1941. In 1936 he obtained the degree of D Sc and later F C Path. He served in the army as a pathologist during the war, where he developed an interest in antibiotics. A prolific writer whose papers were published in a variety of journals, he also wrote “A Textbook of Medical Bacteriology” which was published by W.Heinemann in 1937 and was reprinted a further eight times. In 1961 he was taken ill and was forced to retire from his position as director of the clinical laboratory.