Ralph Vipont BROWN was born in 1898, younger son of Dr Edward Vipont Brown, a general practitioner in Manchester, the family all being Quakers. Like his elder brother Cedric, he chose to follow his father into medicine and began study at Manchester University, but by the time he had passed his first major examination, WW1 had been declared and he decided to suspend study so as to do humanitarian work for the Friends’ War Victims Relief Service, sleeping on a warehouse floor whilst helping in the Relief Service office in London. After FAU training and the imposition of conscription in 1916, he apeared before the Manchester Tribunal, and was refused CO recognition; this was reversed on appeal, and he went out to France with the FWVRS in January 1917. So great was the need, he volunteered to stay on after the Armistice, but was caught by the widespread influenza epidemic and died on 1 March 1919, he is buried in Les Baraques Military Cemetery | map

Brother Cedric Brown served in the FAU from 1914 to 1919, in France from 1915, and afterwards completed his training as a doctor, joining the family’s practice that had treated a number of WW1 COs and treated others in WW2.