Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows

John Bentham Morris was born in London on 9 January 1933, the oldest son of Selwyn Morris, a distinguished New Zealand orthopaedic surgeon, who at the time was in England studying for the FRCS. He was educated at King's College, Auckland, and then proceeded to the University of Otago where he graduated in medicine in 1956. After holding junior appointments in New Zealand and obtaining the Primary Fellowship examination, he came to England and completed his FRCS in 1960. He then concentrated on orthopaedic training by holding appointments at the Rowley Bristow Orthopaedic Hospital and then in Manchester at Sir John Charnley’s Centre for Hip Surgery at Wrightington Hospital. It was this time with Charnley that stimulated the interest in hip surgery which was to influence his subsequent career. After Wrightington, he had a spell at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and in 1962 he was honoured by being appointed an Exchange Travelling Fellow of the British Orthopaedic Association and carried out an extensive tour of North America. He returned to New Zealand in 1963 as a visiting orthopaedic surgeon at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland, and was later appointed to the staff at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital. His time, however, was not devoted solely to private and hospital practice. He received a Bank of New Zealand grant for research and commenced a programme of hip operations in sheep and investigated various methods of fixation and the reaction of bone to the foreign materials. He later commented that his round of these patients grazing on the hillside on a sunny morning was the easiest ward round he did! He returned to England for a short time in 1966 and received permission from Sir John Charnley to use his prosthesis design for total replacement of the hip joint and to pass on this knowledge to other New Zealand surgeons after appropriate training. He performed the first total hip joint replacement operation in New Zealand, and other specialists came from within New Zealand, Australia, and Japan to be trained by him. This allowed Middlemore Hospital to be developed as one of the first centres outside Britain using this prosthesis and enabled him to embark on a research programme for the detailed evaluation of these patients. He also developed an interest in the orthopaedic aspects of spina bifida and visited Australia to study this. He conducted a special clinic at the Crippled Children Society (now CCS Disability Action) for the supervision of these patients. He visited Japan in 1965 to attend a meeting of the Western Pacific Orthopaedic Association and following this was able to develop an excellent liaison with the orthopaedic department of University of Tokyo so that each year young Japanese surgeons could work at Middlemore Hospital with reciprocal benefit. He died on his birthday, 9 January 1970, at the early age of 37 after a long battle with cancer and was survived by his wife Marion (the daughter of William Cotter and brother of Pat Cotter, both FRCS) and three sons. The Middlemore hip replacement programme was continued successfully after his death by Mr O R Nicholson and others. In his Preface to *Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research* in 1970, Sir John Charnley noted Morris’ pioneering hip surgery work and said: “There is a tragic gap resulting from the death of one of the most promising and dedicated orthopaedic surgeons of the younger school…As the last of his clinical teachers, I mourn his loss to medical science.” An outstanding sportsman from his early school days, Morris was a university double blue at cricket and rugby. He represented NZ Universities in rugby matches against Australia in 1954 and as a stylish, free scoring batsman, played over 20 first class games for Auckland between 1951 and 1957, scoring two centuries. He was picked for a test trial in 1954, and in a tour match against the 1956 West Indies side, scored a half century against the famous spin trio of Ramadhin, Valentine and Sobers. After his playing days were over, he gave much advice in the management of sports injuries and many cricketers remembered him as a doctor with a “way” with their injuries. Auckland Cricket’s ‘Cricketer of the Year’ Cup has been awarded in his name every year since 1973.