A glance at the sidebar of this family history reveals one of the most remarkable aspects of this line of the Murray-Priors: the tradition of naming the eldest son Thomas. It started with the Prior family, with the first known Thomas Prior living in the early 1300s, as described in priors_in_england. Some 300 years later, another Thomas Prior moved to Ireland and, with his son Thomas, established the family there - see priors_in_ireland_1636-c.1803. The most famous in the family, another Thomas (Tom) Prior , left a will which ensured the surname became Murray Prior/Murray-Prior. After that, there was a John and an Andrew Murray-Prior, then Thomas Murray-Prior, born in 1773. Since then, there has been an unbroken line of elder sons called Thomas. Perhaps as remarkable, given the past's high infant mortality, is that all those Thomases survived to reach adulthood and become a parent. Tom and Lillian M-P's descendants continued the tradition of naming their first son Thomas. It is a tradition that has resulted in the third Thomas Lodge M-P, and nine generations of an unbroken line of Thomas Murray-Priors.

Tom and Lillian had four children, of whom two survived infancy.

Though we try to avoid biographies of living M-Ps, there are two photographs which are in the public domain. One, from the National Archives of Australia, is a photo of Thomas A. M-P c.1960. It is captioned 'Singapore student, Manoharan Ponnusamy, in special Cuban dress, plays the bongo drums watched by medical students George Wells, left, and Tom Murray-Prior at Queensland University', click on students. The other photo, from the Fryer Library (University of Queensland) Miscellaneous Photograph Collection¹⁾ was taken in Brisbane, 1960 and is captioned, 'University of Queensland Inter-College Rowing Champions' with Tom Murray-Prior 3rd from left in 2nd back row.

Richard John (12 June 1945 - 8 December 2001) was born at his parents' home in Leura in the Blue Mountains.²⁾ As outlined in their entry, the family frequently moved when their sons were young. Richard as a baby and toddler

Richard's childhood was adversely affected by two things: one was his father's difficulty adjusting to post war family life; the other was that he was sick for an extended time with Chronic Glomerulonephritis (kidney disease). These adversities had a lasting effect on Richard’s outlook to life.

Richard M-P with his elder brother: the first photo was taken in July 1948, the next in c.late 1950s.
Richard married Ilma Murphy on 7 January 1967. They had a son and daughter, who in turn have four children. An older Richard. Richard the proud grandfather