'Ted' Moloney was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 26 June 1912. His father, John Patrick Moloney, was a merchant. His mother was Mary Ann née Odbert. From Otago High School, he entered Otago University, where he played cricket, qualified in 1935, and won a medical travelling scholarship. He was a demonstrator in the department of physiology and pathology at the Otago Medical School, and then completed house officer posts in New Plymouth Hospital, New Zealand. He then went to London to be house surgeon and house physician at the Hammersmith Hospital, working for George Grey Turner. Throughout the war he worked in the Emergency Medical Service in London and then went to Oxford as first assistant to Joseph Trueta and then Sir Hugh Cairns. He published extensively, especially on the repair of hernia with nylon. He was appointed consultant surgeon to the Radcliffe Infirmary. He had many interests, including golf, swimming, photography and flying. In 1942, he married Iris Acton, a doctor at King's. Their older son, John Richard, entered medicine. Ted died on 27 September 1997.