Born at Middlesbrough on 16 June 1876 son of Robert Telford, accountant, of Withington and Mary Ann Davison his wife, he was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos part I, 1897. He was an assistant surgeon at the Royal Salford Hospital and afterwards surgeon to the Royal Infirmary, Manchester, where he had been a resident, and to the Children's Hospital, Pendlebury. He was consulting orthopaedic surgeon to the Manchester Education Committee and director of surgical services to the Municipal Hospitals. During the war of 1914-18 he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was Professor of Systematic Surgery in the University of Manchester 1922-36, and was honoured with the title of Emeritus when he retired. Telford devised a masterly pre-ganglionic operation for sympathectomy, and was the first surgeon to define the indications for this treatment and explain its limitations (*Brit J Surg* 1935, 23, 448; *Lancet* 1938, 1, 70; *Proc Roy Soc Med* 1944, 37, 621). He lived at Withington and retired to Prestatyn, North Wales where he kept "busy, fit and happy" into old age, gardening and making clocks. He married in 1909 Sarah Waterhouse who survived him by a few months. He died on 26 March 1961 aged 84. Mrs Telford left his library to Manchester University and the residue of their large fortune to the Manchester Medical Society.