Biographies of people buried between 1880 & 89
Ralph Milner (1818 - 1882)
Mr Ralph Milner was a surgeon who practiced on Oldfield Lane for 40 years and became known as the "Oldfield Lane Bone Doctor". He was born at Roseacre, Lancashire and attended the nearby Kirkham Grammar School. On leaving this high class educational establishment he came to Manchester in 1834 and was apprenticed to a surgeon named Mr Owen and attended the Manchester School of Medicine. He qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1840 and 12 months later became a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. No sooner had he been placed upon the medical register, he became associated with the celebrated original "Oldfield Lane doctor" Dr Taylor, to whom he was distantly related. On the death of Dr Taylor, Ralph Milner succeeded to the "extensive and lucrative" practice establish by the "renowned bone-setter".
Ralph Milner married Mary Ann Mottram, daughter of Mr John Mottram, Brewer of Salford, at Manchester Cathedral on 8th June 1844. They had several children, but tragically they all died in infancy. Mary Ann was to die young as well, but Ralph married again to Mary Ann's cousin, Annie Lythgoe, daughter of Mr Abraham Mottram of Warrington. This marriage was fruitful as they had 16 children including Edmund Taylor Milner BA, who at the time of his father's death was a student at Owens College and destined to become the third "Oldfield Lane doctor".
Mr Ralph Milner held no honorary or re-numerative appointments. He was a well-respected and excellent surgical practitioner. He professed a mild, but decidedly Conservatism and sometimes visited the Crescent political club. For a considerable length of time before he died he suffered from an affection of the heart, but it was only shortly before he died that he relinquished the full activity of his medical practice. However, it was at his residence, No.6 The Crescent, that he died on Wednesday 11th July 1882, aged 64. His remains were interred at Salford Cemetery on Friday 13th July.
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