Charles Gordon Bayliss, thoracic physician, was born on 19 March 1900, at Manly, son of Walter Charles Bayliss (born in Birmingham), and Elizabeth Anne Gordon. He had two siblings; his brother Clive, and sister Ina. Gordon (nicknamed Cocky) attended Sydney Grammar School and started his study of Medicine at Sydney University in 1918, with a break in 1919, due to illness, presumably related to the great flu epidemic, graduating in 1924. After residency training at St George Hospital he started practice at Campsie in 1926, where he remained for 20 years. He married Agnes Brooks Langwell, a trained masseur, the forerunner of physiotherapists, in 1934; and they had two children, David and Helen.
Gordon developed an interest in tuberculosis and was appointed as a visiting medical officer at Canterbury District Hospital in 1928, and physician-in-charge of the Chest Clinic from 1938, until his retirement in 1980. He was appointed assistant physician to the Chest Clinic at Royal North Shore Hospital in 1939, and was closely associated with Bruce White and Cotter Harvey, the acknowledged leaders in the field of tuberculosis at that time. He was appointed physician-in-charge of the Chest Clinic at St George Hospital in 1946. With a wide experience of tuberculosis, he set up practice in Macquarie Street, Sydney in 1946. He was a Consulting Physician for the Department of Tuberculosis in New South Wales. He volunteered for war service in 1939, but was not drafted.
The standard treatment for tuberculosis cavities in the first half of this century, before the advent of antibiotics, was artificial pneumothorax. However, success was often hindered or prevented by the development of pleural adhesions. Gordon Bayliss developed special expertise in the technique of thoracoscopic pneumonolysis for division of these pleural adhesions. According to Maurice Joseph he taught himself the technique and practiced using shoeboxes and string to simulate adhesions. Bruce White, when recommending his reappointment at Royal North Shore Hospital in 1947, commented that he was peerless in the performance of this procedure. At that time he had performed over 560 thoracoscopies, all those recommended at Royal North Shore Hospital, Canterbury District Hospital, Waterfall Sanatorium, Bodington Red Cross Home, Lady Davidson Home, St George Hospital and the Anti-Tuberculosis Association Clinic. He published the results of his work in a paper 'Closed intrapleural pneumonolysis' (Med J Aust 1944, 2, l29-137), and in a monograph entitled 'Closed Intrapleural Pneumonolysis' (Australasian Medical Publishing Co, Ltd, Sydney, 1945).
He was a foundation member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1938, and was elected a Fellow of the American college of Chest Physicians in 1945, and the Governor of its New South Wales Board from 1960 to 1974.
Gordon Bayliss was a quiet, reserved man of upright, and somewhat austere appearance, given to wearing butterfly wing collars in his earlier days. His daughter reported to Maurice Joseph at the time of his death that she had a bagful to give away. He had a keen interest in photography and processed his own colour negatives; he read widely and remained closely involved in chest medicine until his retirement. After the death of his wife in 1985, he moved to McMahon's Point and lived with his daughter. He continued to walk regularly into the city and suburbs occasionally as far as Central station even into his 90s. He died at the age of 95.