Search Results for Medical Obituaries - Narrowed by: Civil servant

First Title value, for Searching Rennie, Archibald Louden (1924 - 2017)

2025-12-26T13:31:40Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2023-07-05
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Civil servant
Details Archibald ‘Archie’ Louden Rennie was secretary of the Scottish Home and Health Department. He was born on 4 June 1924 in Guardbridge, Fife, the son of John Rennie, a railway signalman, and Isabella Mitchell Rennie née Louden. He attended Madras College in St Andrews and then studied physics at St Andrews University, where he was president of the students representative council. From 1944 to 1947 he served in the Royal Navy as a scientist developing mine counter measures. Following his demobilisation, he joined the Department of Health for Scotland, just as the National Health Service was being established. From 1962 to 1963 he was private secretary to the secretary of state for Scotland. He then became an assistant secretary at the Scottish Home and Health Department (from 1963 to 1969) and registrar general for Scotland (from 1969 to 1973), where he oversaw the 1971 Census. He was then under secretary at the Scottish Office from 1973. In 1977 he became secretary of the Scottish Home and Health department, a post he held until 1984. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1980 and became a fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1994. In his retirement he was a finance convener and chancellor’s assessor on the court of St Andrews University, vice chairman of the advisory committee on distinction awards for medical consultants, and chairman of the fund set up to support victims of the Lockerbie tragedy. After he retired, he moved to Elie in Fife, where he was director and then chairman of the Harbour Trust, chairman of the community council and commodore of Elie and Earlsferry Sailing Club. Outside his professional life, he was interested in language and words. In the 1950s he was an active member of the Speculative Society, founded in 1763 to improve ‘the arts of literary composition and public speaking’. Later he joined the Order of the Grey Monks of St Giles, a group of writers of light verse. He had a keen interest in contemporary art and was a member of the Scottish Arts Club. At home he enjoyed gardening, woodwork, building stone walls and sailing. In his *Who’s Who* entry he listed ‘reading, pottering, firth-watching’ as his interests. Rennie died on 16 November 2017 at the age of 93. He was survived by his wife Kathleen (née Harkess), whom he married in 1950, their four sons, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010296
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Herniman, Richard Harold (1934 - 1987)

2025-12-26T13:31:40Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-05-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007300-E007399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379511379511
Occupation Civil servant Public health consultant
Details Richard Harold Herniman was born in Chichester on 12 January 1934. He trained at Christ's College, Cambridge, and St Bartholomew's Hospital and besides the FRCS and MRCOG he later obtained a postgraduate degree in public health at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as Medical Attaché to the British Embassy in Laos for two years before joining the World Health Organisation. His first posting was to the Royal Laotian School of Medicine from 1969 to 1971. From 1971 he worked in WHO and supported projects in the Philippines, the Republic of Korea and the regional office in Manila, where he was regional adviser on health service development. He spent four years in Geneva at WHO headquarters on control of diarrhoeal disease, then returned to Manila as director of the division of health protection and promotion. He is remembered as a kind, cheerful and approachable man, the ideal international civil servant - expert in his technical field and in his relations with people of all races. He spoke French, Lao and other local languages and was interested in the history and cultures of the Far East. He never married, but maintained close ties with his elder brother, Peter and his twin, John, and their families. Tragically he took his own life on 31 December 1987.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007328
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Longworth-Krafft, Gerard (1913 - 2005)

2025-12-26T13:31:40Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-12-19 2012-03-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000300-E000399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372498372498
Occupation Civil servant General surgeon
Details Gerard Longworth-Krafft was a medical officer at the Department of Health and Social Security. He was born in Manchester on 13 March 1913. His father, Gerardus Krafft, was a business man from Dordrecht, Holland. His mother was Sarah née Longworth. From Manchester Grammar School he won the Adams scholarship to Manchester University, where he graduated BA, intending to follow his father into business, but the outlook for business in the thirties was grim and he decided to enter medicine, went to St Mary's Hospital in 1935 and there developed a love of sailing which was to continue throughout his life. There he was much influenced by, and sailed with, Aleck Bourne. After qualifying, he did house jobs at St Mary's and then joined the RNVR as a surgeon lieutenant in 1942, spending two years on HMS *Broadway*, a destroyer accompanying North Atlantic Convoys, then on HMS *Gannett* based in Northern Ireland, and finally HMS *Chincara* in Cochin, where he prepared the medical facilities for the newly set-up base. After the war he continued his surgical training and, while a registrar at Southend General Hospital, met Catherine Johnston, also a doctor, whom he married, on which occasion he added Longworth to his name at the request of his mother, who was the last of the Longworths. Catherine later became a consultant radiologist. In 1955 he was appointed consultant surgeon to the West Dorset Hospital in Dorchester, but only for four sessions, not enough to support a growing family of four children, one of whom, Jenny, became a doctor. Reluctantly he forsook surgery and moved to the DHSS in 1960, doing medical assessment work, initially at Norcross and later at Basingstoke, before retiring in his seventies. He was a proud, clever man, fluent in several languages, and a keen amateur singer, sailor and skier. Catherine died at 81 in 2005. Gerard, his world having fallen apart, died six weeks later on 24 May 2005.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000311
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rue, Dame Elsie Rosemary (1928 - 2004)

2025-12-26T13:31:40Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2005-10-19 2012-03-09
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000100-E000199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372310372310
Occupation Civil servant Physician
Details As regional medical officer for Oxford Regional Health Authority Rosemary Rue pioneered part-time specialist medical training for women doctors. She was born in Essex on 14 June 1928, the daughter of Harry and Daisy Laurence. The family moved to London when she was five, and during the Blitz she was sent for safety to stay with relatives in Devon, where she contracted tuberculosis and peritonitis, an experience which determined her to be a doctor. She was educated at Sydenham High School and entered the all-women Royal Free Hospital. In 1950 she married Roger Rue, an instructor in the RAF and was told by the dean that she could not stay on at the medical school if she were married. She was however accepted at Oxford, but took the examinations of London University. Her first job was at a long-stay hospital on the outskirts of Oxford, but was sacked when it was revealed that she was married and had a newborn son. She moved into general practice in 1952, and there contracted poliomyelitis from a patient in 1954, the last person in Oxford to catch the illness. This left her with one useless leg, which made it impossible to carry a medical bag. For a time she taught in a girls' school. By 1955 she and her husband had separated and she went to live in Hertfordshire with her parents, whose GP needed a partner. This was a success, and she combined the practice with being medical officer to the RAF, Bovingdon. In 1960 she became assistant county medical officer for Hertfordshire and five years later assistant senior medical officer for the Oxford region, proceeding to become regional medical officer in 1973 and regional general manager in 1984. She oversaw the building of new hospitals in Swindon, Reading and Milton Keynes, designing basic modules that could be incorporated into every hospital, so obviating architects' fees. Her most important contribution however was to set up a part-time training scheme for women doctors who wanted to become specialists. She discovered 150 women doctors in the Oxford region who were insufficiently employed. She sought them out, interviewed them and found jobs for 50 within a few months, and went on to set up a scheme for training part-time married women. This was a great success and spread from Oxford all over the country, and it was with Rosemary's active help that our College set up the Women in Surgical Training scheme. In 1972 she became one of the founders of the Faculty of Community Health (now the Faculty of Public Health). She was a founding fellow of Green College, Oxford, a President of the BMA and was awarded the Jenner medal of the Royal Society of Health. Small, birdlike, with an intense interest in everything and everybody, she had great charm as well as a formidable intellect. She died of bowel cancer on 24 December 2004, leaving two sons.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000123
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset