MB ChB Manch 1912; MB BS Lond 1913; MRCS LRCP 1917; FRCS Eng 1921.
The eminent plastic surgeon, Thomas Kilner, was born on 17 September 1890 and was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, and the University of Manchester, where he won a number of prizes. Kilner was demonstrator of anatomy at the University from 1912 until 1914 when he was appointed senior house surgeon at MRI. Kilner served as a surgeon in the RAMC and in 1919 was appointed plastic surgeon to Queen Mary's Hospital for Face and Jaw Injuries, Sidcup, where with Sir Harold Gillies he helped to lay the foundations of plastic surgery in Britain. Although the two men worked closely for a number of years, their partnership broke up due to personal differences, and the two men became rivals. Kilner was plastic surgeon to a large number of hospitals, including St Thomas's in 1934. Kilner was plastic surgeon at the new plastic service at MRI from 1936 to 1948. However, he only attended every fortnight and so the waiting list of patients and MRI grew. Kilner was particularly interested in hare lips and cleft palates and founded the hare lip and cleft palate centre at the Duchess of York Hospital for Babies, Manchester. Kilner was known for having created the plastic surgery unit at Stoke Mandeville in 1944 and the same year he was appointed Nuffield Professor of Plastic Surgery at Oxford, a position he held until 1957. Kilner died in Oxford on 2 July 1964.