History has it that c. 1740 a shipwrecked boy possibly from Spain, on the north coast of Anglesey was taken in and brought up by a local doctor and given the name Evan Thomas. Evan had special skills in healing injured birds and animals. Hugh Owen Thomas was the Great - Grandson of Evan Thomas, and was an orthopeadic surgeon. His 'Thomas Splint' was introduced to the battlefields of the First World War, and was credited with cutting the death rate from compound fractures from eighty per cent to twenty per cent.