Born at Hulme Fields, Manchester, on November 2nd, 1793, the son of John Radford, dyer and bleacher. He was educated at a private school in Chester, and was apprenticed to his uncle, William Wood, surgeon, of Manchester, whose partner and successor he afterwards became. He studied at Guy's and St Thomas's Hospitals in London, and in 1818 was elected Surgeon to the Manchester and Salford Lying-in Hospital, and afterwards to St Mary's Hospital for Women, where he became Consulting Physician and Chairman of the Board of Management. He gave his valuable library and museum to St Mary's Hospital in 1853, and in 1856 was instrumental with his wife in securing a new building for the charity. Some years before his death he invested considerable sums of money for the benefit of the poor attending the hospital and gave £1,000 for the upkeep of its library. The catalogue of the library compiled by Dr C J Cullingworth was published in 1877. Radford was one of the founders of the Manchester School of Medicine in 1825, and was a Lecturer on Midwifery at the Pine Street School of Medicine, the first complete provincial medical school. He delivered the first address on obstetrics at the Provincial Medical Society in 1854, and was the author of many papers on midwifery. He married in 1821 Elizabeth (d 1874), daughter of the Rev John Newton, of Didsbury, near Manchester, whose only child died young. Radford died at his residence, Higher Broughton, Manchester, on May 29th, 1881, and was buried in St Paul's Church, Kersal. Thomas Radford was a notable link in the chain of able and well-known Manchester gynaecologists, starting with Charles White (1728-1813) and including John Roberton (1797-1876) and James Whitehead (1812-1885). He was one of the first in this country to advise abdominal section, and gave much assistance and support in 1848 to Charles Clay (1801-1893) in his early operations for the removal of diseased ovaries in 1848. There is a photograph of him in the Fellows' Album.