top of page
THE MEDICAL MEMORIES ROADSHOW
‘To understand where we are today
We have to know where we have come from’
Thomas Porter McMurray
was born at Belfast, 5 December 1887, the sixth child and fifth son of Samuel McMurray, schoolmaster, and Elizabeth Boden, his wife. He was educated at the Academical Institution and at Queen's University, graduating in 1910.
He was appointed house surgeon at the Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool and under the influence of Sir Robert Jones devoted himself to orthopaedic surgery. After serving as surgical tutor and registrar at the Royal Southern, he was during the war of 1914-18 surgeon to the Military Orthopaedic Hospital at Alder Hey and an inspector of orthopaedic hospitals in Ireland.
He was then appointed to the surgical staff of the David Lewis Northern Hospital, Liverpool, and the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital, and was made director of orthopaedics at the latter in 1919. He was lecturer in orthopaedic surgery at Liverpool University for many years and professor from 1940 to 1947. He was consultant in orthopaedics for the North of England under the Emergency Medical Service 1940-45, and was created CBE for his war service. McMurray, for all his eminence as an orthopaedist, remained an excellent general surgeon, and was also a skilled administrator.
He was president of the British Orthopaedic Association 1940-41, president of the Liverpool Medical Institution 1948, and at the time of his death in 1949 president-elect of the British Medical Association for the Liverpool meeting in 1950. McMurray succeeded to the famous tradition and practice of Hugh Owen Thomas, whose life he wrote, and of Robert Jones; and his name appeared below theirs on the brass plate of 11 Nelson Street. This historic house with all his records and relics was destroyed in an air raid during May 1941. McMurray bore the loss stoically.
He moved to 28 Rodney Street, and after his retirement in 1947 lived at Ystrad Cottage, Denbigh, North Wales. McMurray was full of vitality and wit, but essentially reserved and unassuming. He had a boyish good humour, which endeared him to generations of his colleagues and students. His excellent tutorials were carried through without any parade of showmanship. He was a master of the surgery of the hip and knee joints, and modified Lorenz's osteotomy operation for un-united fracture of the neck of the femur. Problems of slowly uniting fractures interested him, and in later years his treatment become more and more conservative, and he was much interested in methods of rehabilitation.
He retained his technical brilliance but operated less and less, and for the last twenty years never used screws, nails, or plates. He devised a new test for damaged semi-lunar cartilage. McMurray did not readily rush into print, but he made many valuable contributions the literature of orthopaedics, not the least being his deliberately small but not slight textbook, which reached a third edition in twelve years. McMurray was honoured with the title of emeritus on retirement from chair, and was among the first of the Edinburgh Fellows elected*ad eundem* by the College in 1948. He was an honorary member of the American Australian, and French orthopaedic societies.
McMurray married twice (1) in 1915 Dorothy, daughter of Squire Hill of Jordanstown, who died in 1936, leaving a son and daughter, Mrs Woodward; (2) in 1944 Winfred Nora, daughter of Ernest Evershed of Brighton. He died suddenly from a heart attack at Ealing Broadway station, London, on 16 November 1949, aged 61, while he was staying with his daughter, on his way to visit his son in South Africa. He was buried in Denbigh borough cemetery, and a memorial service was held at Liverpool Cathedral on 23 November.
​
Publications:-
The life of Hugh Owen Thomas. Lpl med-chir J 1935, 43, 3-41.
A practice of orthopaedic surgery. London, Arnold, 1937; 2nd edition, 1943; 3rd edition, 1949.
Author: Royal College of Surgeons of England - Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
​
https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/lives/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ASSET$002f0$002fSD_ASSET:376620/one
​
Sources:
The Times 18 November 1949 p7e and 24 November, memorial service
​
Brit med J 1949,2, 1236, with portrait and appreciations by Sir Henry Cohen FRCP, Sir Harry Platt VPRCS, Sir Reginald Watson-Jones FRCS, Bryan McFarland FRCS, K W Monsarrat FRCSEd, G W Girdlestone FRCS, p1299 by Sidney Pappworth MB, p1358 by E S A Ashe MB, and 1950, 2, 119, will
​
Lancet 1949, 2, 1017, with portrait and appreciations by Sir Reginald Watson-Jones and Sir Henry Cohen
​
J Bone Jt Surg 1949, 31B, 618, by Bryan McFarland and Sir Reginald Watson-Jones, with portrait
​
Information from Mrs Winfred McMurray
IN MEMORIAM
THOMAS PORTER McMURRAY, C.B.E., M.Ch., F.R.C.S.
1888-1949
The suddenness with which we have lost the alert vitality of T. P. McMurray with his boyish good humour, tall, handsome presence, and perpetual appearance of youth is difficult to believe. Until recent months he was still teaching post-graduate students from Australia, Canada, South Africa and mans’ other parts of the world, and only a few days ago when the Hugh Owen Thomas Lecture was delivered in Liverpool he welcomed ‘ ‘ a lost sheep ‘ ‘ back to the fold. He died from a heart attack in London on November 16, while on his way to South Africa to visit his son.
Born in Belfast, McMurray graduated in medicine at Queen’s University in 1910 and the next year went to Liverpool as house-surgeon to Sir Robert Jones. In 1914, after serving for a short time in France as captain in the R.A.M.C., he was recalled to the Alder Hey Military Orthopaedic Hospital in Liverpool where many English, Canadian and American surgeons were trained by Robert Jones and worked with him. McMurray’s clinical appointments at the 1)avid Lewis Northern Hospital, Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital and Ministry of Pensions Hospital were coupled with University teaching appointments first as lecturer and then, in succession to Robert Jones, as director of orthopaedic studies.
When a chair was established in 1938 he became Liverpool’s first professor of orthopaedics,
and after upholding the traditions of Hugh Owen Thomas for a quarter of a century he was
made emeritus professor last year. He was honoured by the presidencies of the British
Orthopaedic Association and the Liverpool Medical Institution, and was president-elect of the
British Medical Association.
He was essentially a good companion. Whether in the operating theatre where none was immune from his wit, on the golf links where he sank ridiculously long putts without appearing to look at the ball, at home playing cards where he always seemed to win, or at a fair throwing at coconuts and smashing a whole stand of crockery for an outlay of half a crown, he was great fun. When doing nothing he did it thoroughly, and to see him sitting in the sun at his beloved Ystrad “ cottage,” gazing at the Denbighshire hills, was an education in relaxation. His kindness was warmed with an emotion that he himself would have denied.
For six years after the loss of his first wife he was a very lonely man ; but then the wound healed and after marrying again he enjoyed life more and more. To his wife and daughter, and to his son now practicing orthopaedics in South Africa, we offer our deep sympathy.
In McMurray was exemplified British reluctance to commit clinical observation to writing until confirmed after many years. His writings were therefore few, but they were important. Some may still find difficulty in eliciting his sign for posterior horn tears of the meniscus, and others may wonder why oblique displacement osteotomy avails in the treatment of osteoarthritis of the hip, but none may discount his conclusions which were based so firmly on long observation.
His dexterity as an operator is almost legendary. Many have seen him remove a meniscus with the whole of its posterior horn in less than five minutes, and recent American visitors spoke of the fleetness of foot that was demanded of assistants chasing round the operating table when a hip joint was disarticulated in little more than ten minutes. But it was the consummate skill and artistry of his technique that was even more impressive than the speed of it ; the speed was indeed “ an achievement and not an aim.”
It is as a teacher that McMurray will be remembered. He was forceful, dogmatic, and even intolerant if the principles of Hugh Owen Thomas were denied. ‘ ‘ You’ve read that in a book ‘ ‘ he would say with reproof. He was not an orator, but his words will long be remembered : “ Feel it laddie “ ; “ I think you’re splendid “ ; “ Get on with it laddie “; “ You’re a credit to us. “ The building up of a great postgraduate school of orthopaedic studies, with the M.Ch.Orth. degree of the University of Liverpool, is the permanent contribution he made to the surgery of his generation. It is difficult to know the full extent to which he maintained and enhanced the Liverpool tradition of orthopaedic surgery but a measure of it is in the words of his old students, from the four quarters of the world,
inscribed in a recent presentation volume:
‘‘ This book is signed and presented by your old students as a symbol of their respect and affection and to record for ever the debt they and their country owe to you. By your skill and by your teaching you have enhanced a great tradition: this is now our treasured heritage and by our deeds we will preserve it.”
​
B. McFarland
R.Watson-Jones
THE ABOVE OBITUARY APPEARED IN VOL. 31 B, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1949 OF THE J.B.J.S.
bottom of page