ABSTRACT
John Milson Rhodes himself began to read medicine at the Glasgow Medical School but after the family moved back to Manchester, he enrolled at Richard Owen’s College and Manchester School of Medicine where he was a major prizewinner. With a special interest in learning disabilities and epilepsy, he also took on many voluntary roles reforming the provision of health care in Manchester’s workhouses. In 1880, Rhodes was appointed Overseer of the Poor for Chorlton, Manchester. This was a role that was defunct elsewhere in the country following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. Rhodes also worked specifically in the care of patients with neurological illness. Throughout his career, Rhodes was devoted to the plight of children in difficult social circumstances. This may have been through poverty or medical illness, in particular neurological illness. Rhodes never married and left no children when he died on 25 September 1909. His death was recorded as an accidental strychnine overdose.
