Major Dr. Thomas Joseph Crean (19 April 1873[1] – 25 March 1923) was an Irish rugby union player, British Army soldier and doctor.

He was the fifth child of Michael Theobald Crean, a barrister originally from Fethard in County Tipperary who worked for the Irish Land Commission, and his wife Emma.

The Dunns' residence was Esker House, Upper Rathmines Road, and Crean's three older sisters - Mary, Emma and Eleanor – were all born there.

A third brother, Richard, died as an infant, and a fourth sister, Alice Mary, was born in 1879 in the Crean family home at No.

[citation needed] Alice would later marry Alexander Findlater Todd, one of Crean's rugby teammates on the 1896 British Isles tour of South Africa.

Frank studied engineering, emigrating to Canada where he undertook a survey of Saskatchewan in 1908–09 on behalf of the Canadian Government.

Also from Clonmel was Lieutenant Colonel Dr. John Joseph Crean, a cousin and close friend to his father who had been with General Graham's Suakin Expedition in Sudan following the fall of Khartoum in 1885.

Crean ultimately followed in the footsteps of these two men, becoming both a successful practitioner and an esteemed officer of the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Crean noticed Ahern was in trouble and together with a young solicitor named Leachman from Dundrum, he managed to bring him ashore.

In 1901, he became a Surgeon Captain and on 18 December, at the Battle of Tygerkloof, he won his VC when he successfully attended the wounds of two soldiers and a fellow officer under heavy enemy fire.

[7] One week later, on 20 March 1902, the members of St. Vincent's Hospital Football Club gave a dinner at the Dolphin Hotel in his honour.

[1] He was later appointed medical officer in charge of the hospital in the Royal Enclosure, Ascot where he once performed a life saving trepanning operation on a jockey who was thrown from his horse during a race.

He ran out onto the course in his shirt sleeves and saved the jockey's life by removing portions of the bones of his skull with a hammer and chisel.

[10] Crean returned to his practice in Harley Street but by now his war service had begun to seriously affect his health and he was unable to maintain the business.

[citation needed] His daughter Carmen died some years later while his wife Victoria and son Patrick moved to Paris for the duration of the 1920s.

Following Victoria's sudden passing in 1929, Patrick moved back to England and soon began his successful career as an actor and fight master, running the Sophy School of Fencing before emigrating to Canada.

[11] On 1 August 2001 the South African Post Office issued a stamp featuring Crean as part of their commemorations for the Second Boer War.

In 2019 his story along with other Wanderers Victoria Cross recipients Robert Johnston and Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey was told in a documentary entitled "Mark Our Place" directed and produced by Ashley Morrison.