John Stanley James Morley was born in Withington, Manchester, on 2 March 1918, the son of John Morley FRCS and Mary Ogilvie Simon, the daughter of a congregational minister. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, Rugby, and University College, Oxford, before completing his clinical studies in Manchester. He was house surgeon at the Hope Hospital, Salford, in 1943, and then joined the RNVR, where he served as a temporary Surgeon Lieutenant. In 1948, he returned to Manchester, to the Royal Infirmary, as a house surgeon to Sir Henry Platt. He was later senior house surgeon at the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford. Between 1953 and 1954 he was a general surgical registrar at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospitals. He then went to St Bartholomew's as an orthopaedic registrar. He emigrated to Melbourne, where he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Children's and the Alfred Hospitals. He married Ruth Hook in 1957 and they had two daughters and four sons. He listed his hobbies as gardening and trout fishing. He died on 18 December 1998.