Morris Axford was born in England in 1902 and came to New Zealand with his parents, Dr and Mrs S B Axford, in 1907. He was educated at Te Aroha School and Auckland Grammar School. He entered the University of Otago Medical School in 1920 with a University National Scholarship. He graduated MB ChB in 1924, winning the Christie Medal for surgical anatomy and the Batchelor Prize in midwifery and gynaecology. For eighteen months under Professor Gowland he lectured and demonstrated in the anatomy department of the medical school. He went to London in 1928, and spent two years in postgraduate studies at the Middlesex and Guy's Hospitals and at Portsmouth and Plymouth Hospitals. He took the FRCS in 1929. He returned to Auckland in 1930 to become surgical registrar at Auckland Hospital, the first holder of what was then a new post in the hospital. For more than twenty-five years he was visiting orthopaedic surgeon at Auckland and Middlemore Hospitals, and for fifteen years senior medical officer to the Auckland Crippled Children Society, helping Selwyn Morris to plan and develop the medical services of the Wilson Home at Takapuna; he also helped to train St John Ambulance Officers. He was the leading orthopaedic surgeon of his generation, when cruel disease forced his resignation from hospital work in 1957 at the age of fifty-five. After long illness he died at Auckland on 12 February 1968; his wife had died a month before him. He was survived by a daughter, Mrs Angela Douglas of Rotorua, a brother Edward Axford of Auckland, and a sister Mrs Mavis Commins of Cambridge.