**Background:** Trevor Philip Mann (1916–1996) was the first consultant paediatrician at the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital (RACH) in Brighton, a position he took up in 1951. Prior to his appointment, the hospital had been staffed by resident medical officers and honorary adult physicians. This biographical article, published in 2022, seeks to document Mann's life, clinical innovations, and service developments, and to reconnect local clinicians with his memory.
**Methods:** The article is a historical narrative review based on archival sources, personal recollections, published obituaries, and family records. It includes references to Mann's own publications, hospital records, and a eulogy delivered at his funeral by a colleague.
**Key Results:** Mann was born on 29th September 1916 in Wandsworth, London. At age 14, he spent nearly a year in hospital with tuberculosis, an experience that likely influenced his decision to study medicine and engage in TB research. He studied at St Mary's Hospital, London (qualifying in 1941), served as a Royal Navy Surgeon-Lieutenant during WWII aboard HMS Georgetown and HMS Campania, and married Joyce Iris Ladbrook in 1946. After the war, he served as Streptomycin Registrar for the Medical Research Council from 1946–1948, participating in one of the earliest randomised controlled trials—the use of streptomycin for tuberculous meningitis, which had previously been fatal. He then became registrar and first assistant to Sir Alan Moncrieff at Great Ormond Street Hospital, working in England's first premature baby unit at Hammersmith Hospital.
In 1951, Mann was appointed as the first consultant paediatrician at the RACH, initially contracted for six sessions (three days) per week. He introduced parental open access policies, encouraging mothers to stay with their hospitalised children—a direct response to his own childhood experience of only one hour of weekly visiting. He published on infantile infectious gastroenteritis in The Lancet in 1954, introducing strict handwashing, barrier nursing, pre-heated feeds, and redesigned wards with cubicles, which were associated with a decline in infectious diarrhoea cases. During the 1960s, he took sabbatical time at University College London Hospital to learn neonatal care and ventilator use, subsequently establishing the first neonatal unit in England outside of London at the Alex in the 1970s. This unit was renamed the Trevor Mann Baby Unit upon his retirement in 1981. He also founded a paediatric surgery division, eliminating the need to transfer surgical children to London or Southampton. Mann published widely, including a Colour Atlas of Paediatric Facial Diagnosis in 1989, and was one of the first to recognise the importance of fundoscopy in suspected physical child abuse. He founded the Royal Alexandra Centenary Appeal for Research in 1968 (now Rockinghorse Children's Charity), served as President of the Royal Society of Medicine's Section of Paediatrics in 1974, and was an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians and Honorary Tutor in Paediatrics at Guy's Hospital. He died of prostate carcinoma on 24th September 1996, five days before his 80th birthday.
**Clinical Implications:** This article does not present new clinical data but serves as a historical record. Mann's innovations—barrier nursing, open parental visiting, dedicated neonatal units, and paediatric surgery departments—are now standard in modern paediatric care. His work underscores the impact of individual clinical leadership on regional service development and the importance of integrating research with clinical practice.