Search Results for murley

First Title value, for Searching Murley, Alan Hugh George (1923 - 1996)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-24
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008200-E008299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380398380398
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details Alan Murley was born in Gidea Park, Essex, on 9 November 1923, the son of George Fraser Murley, an insurance broker, and Winifred Annie Gunary. He was educated at the Royal Liberty School, Romford, where he excelled in sports, being captain of his cricket and football teams. Despite being offered a place to read physics at Cambridge he chose to read medicine in London and trained at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, qualifying in 1946. After junior posts at Bart's he joined the RNVR, becoming surgeon lieutenant commander. After demobilisation he was appointed orthopaedic registrar at Bart's and then senior registrar at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, where he trained under Jackson Burrows. He also spent a year as lecturer in orthopaedics at the University of Hong Kong where he developed interests in poliomyelitis in children, leprosy and spinal tuberculosis. He was appointed consultant orthopaedic surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and the East Anglian Regional Hospitals Board in 1962, and he later became an ABC orthopaedic travelling fellow. He developed the hand service at Addenbrooke's Hospital and worked closely with rheumatology colleagues on the combined management of rheumatoid arthritis, and also on the treatment of children with spina bifida. He married Anne Macdonald in 1956 and they had one son, Richard, and two daughters, Helen and Kate, who all survived him. His outside interests included athletics and tennis, books, music and gardening. He retired from his hospital posts in 1988, and died on 11 January 1996, aged 72. A Service of Thanksgiving was held at the Round Church at St Andrew the Great in Cambridge on 18 January 1996.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008215
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Murley, Sir Reginald Sydney (1916 - 1997)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2007-03-08 2007-03-21
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000300-E000399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372520372520
Occupation General surgeon
Details Reginald Murley, known universally to friend and foe alike as ‘Reggie’, was a consultant surgeon at the Royal Northern Hospital and a former President of the College. He was born on 2 August 1916. His father, Sydney Herbert, was a fur trader and a general manager of the Hudson Bay Company. His mother, Beatrice, was a cousin of Lillian Bayliss, founder of the Old Vic theatre. Reggie was educated at Dulwich College, where some of the features of his rugged extrovert personality rapidly became apparent. In 1934 he entered St Bartholomew’s Hospital, then at its zenith as one of the leading teaching hospitals, where he won several prizes in anatomy and physiology. Anticipating that war was inevitable, he joined the Territorial Army early in 1939 and a week before the second world war began found himself in the No 168 City of London Cavalry Field Ambulance, and as a consequence had to wear breeches, spurs, and learn to ride a horse. He travelled widely in the Army, seeing service in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, gaining invaluable experience, mainly in plastic surgery. He returned to England in 1944 and was posted as a surgeon to No 53 Field Surgical Unit in France, Holland and Germany, and gained extensive experience of the surgical aspects of modern warfare prior to his demobilisation as a Major. Following his return to civilian life, he was appointed as an anatomy demonstrator at Bart’s. From 1946 to 1949 together he was surgical chief assistant there, with clinical assistantships at St Mark’s and St Peter’s Hospitals. He passed the final FRCS examination in 1946. In the same year, he was appointed consultant surgeon to St Alban’s City Hospital, and in 1952 as consultant surgeon to the Royal Northern Hospital in London. He continued to serve both these institutions with distinction for the remainder of his professional life. He did some excellent research on Geoffrey Keynes’ conservative approach to breast cancer and demonstrated that it had advantages in survival rate over the then widely practised radical mastectomy. He also worked on the detection and prevention of venous thrombosis, was awarded an Hunterian Professorship on this subject, and became an early advocate of emergency pulmonary embolectomy. Although he always saw himself first and foremost as a practising surgeon, by the mid 1940s Reggie became increasingly apprehensive about the introduction of a National Health Service and his interest in, or rather his disillusionment with, medical politics dates from this time. As a senior surgical registrar at a special meeting of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons just before the NHS began he had the courage and temerity to criticise the College and the President for “*a tactical blunder which had confused and divided the profession, weakened the position of the BMA and strengthened the hand of the minister*”. Though he and his fellow rebels lost the ensuing vote, Reggie remained opposed to ‘nationalised medicine’ and he firmly believed that the profession had been sold out by the machinations of a few senior members. He was a founder member of the Fellowship for Freedom in Medicine and was its President in 1974. As one of the College’s first surgical tutors and a regional adviser, he was elected to the Council in 1970, and as President on Bastille Day (14 July) in 1977. He devoted himself with his customary vigour to that office: he was frequently controversial, loyally adherent to his principles, acerbic but amusing, argumentative but endearing, and, above all, devoted to the College and its history. He was an accomplished public speaker and punctiliously disciplined in keeping to his allotted time span, which was remarkable given that he was an inveterate chatterer who attempted to dominate every conversation. Much as he enjoyed his three years as President, he came to feel in his latter years that his most important contribution to the College was his eight years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Hunterian collection. John Hunter, the founder of scientific surgery, was Murley’s hero and his devotion to the collection of Hunter’s specimens knew no limits. Ever alert to the slightest whiff of a threat, he fiercely opposed any attempt to diminish the importance of Hunter in the College’s scheme of priorities. During a particularly difficult period, when his health was already in decline, he earned the unfailing support of the elected trustees during a long period of arduous meetings and only relinquished the chair when he felt that the ship was in calmer waters once more. Reggie’s appointment to the 1st Cavalry Division in 1939 was apposite, for this ambience suited his attributes well, and he remained a cavalryman at heart throughout his life. With his booming, resonant voice, accompanied by a hearty guffaw, staff and patients alike became aware of his arrival long before he appeared in person. Not for him the constraints of devious Machiavellian diplomacy which he generally termed ‘pussy-footing around’. He remained firmly wedded to the Cardigan principle of a full-blooded frontal assault, sabre drawn, no matter how great the odds. It was these very qualities which made him such a steadfast ally and stalwart opponent: no one was left long to linger in anguished doubt as to the respective camp to which they had been assigned. Reggie was without question a member of that rapidly dwindling band of men known as ‘characters’: a quality composed of a judicious mixture of intelligence, ability and individuality; difficult to define but instantly recognisable features common to many men who made our country great and now in very short supply. In 1947, he married Daphne Butler née Garrod who had been twice widowed in the war; he inherited a step daughter, Susan, and they had a further two daughters, Jennifer and Hilary, and three sons, David, Gavin and Anthony. There are nine grandchildren. Sadly his final years were clouded by steadily progressive disability and he died on 2 October 1997.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000334
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, Thomas Paterson (1920 - 2012)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Fred Gentili
Publication Date 2016-07-27 2017-10-19
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009100-E009199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/381354381354
Occupation Neurosurgeon
Details Thomas Morley was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was born on 13 June 1920 in Manchester, England, to John Morley, professor of surgery at the University of Manchester, and Molly Ogilvie Morley née Simon. At the age of seven, Morley was sent to boarding school in Oxford and then to Rugby School in Warwickshire. Soon after his arrival at boarding school, his mother died from an infection, a loss that stayed with him throughout his life and which drew him very close to his older brother, Jim. He studied medicine at Oxford, where he met Helen Mary Currer Briggs, who was only one of two women in his year. Upon his graduation in 1943, they entered into a marriage that would last for nearly seven decades. They honeymooned in the Lake District, a place to which they would return throughout their lives to walk by the lakes and climb the fells. Shortly after their wedding, he obtained the position of junior house surgeon to Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, Manchester's leading neurosurgeon. His appointment with Jefferson was somewhat nepotistic, as the Morley home in Manchester was close to Jefferson's. He knocked on Jefferson's door, and asked for a job, whereupon Jefferson replied 'Nobody wants to come to my service, because it is too much like hard work, and I won't give you any time.' He recalled the six-month internship at the Manchester Royal Infirmary as being extremely difficult with many sleepless nights and challenging cases. In 1944 he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He was posted first in England and then to Pune, India - and remained enamoured of India for the rest of his life. His younger brother, Dick, a gifted pilot, was killed in the Second World War. After the war, Morley completed residencies in general and orthopaedic surgery, and obtained his FRCS in 1949. He then returned to Jefferson's neurological service to pursue his main interest, specialty training in neurosurgery, where he spent the next three and a half years. There were few job opportunities for neurosurgeons in England at the time of his graduation, however, as fate would decree, during the war Jefferson had met Harry Botterell, who was serving as senior neurosurgeon to the Canadian Neurological Hospital in Basingstoke. In 1952, Botterell succeeded Canada's first neurosurgeon, Kenneth George McKenzie, as the head of neurosurgery in Toronto, Canada. Botterell asked Jefferson to facilitate the recruitment of one of his trainees to Toronto, where he and McKenzie were in dire need of assistance. Accordingly, Botterell wrote to Morley and asked if he would consider going to Toronto to begin a career in neurosurgery. He was very pleased to receive this personal letter from Botterell, not realising that nearly all of his colleagues in Manchester had received the same letter of invitation! Morley jumped at the opportunity, and began a one-year fellowship in neurosurgery at Toronto General Hospital. He lived in the college wing of the hospital and made daily ward rounds with residents William Horsey and William Lougheed, who would also become leaders in the history of Canadian neurosurgery. In 1953, he was hired to the permanent staff in neurosurgery, and Helen and their two young daughters, Jane and Rosamund, immigrated to Canada to join him. Three years later, their third child, David, was born. His practice grew and he began specialising in brain tumour surgery and procedures used to treat trigeminal neuralgia. He quickly became a skilful technical neurosurgeon, demonstrating complete economy of motion in the operating room and speeding his way through the most exacting and difficult procedures, to the great benefit of his patients. As a clinical research niche, he moved forward with a project he had initially started with Jefferson in Manchester on the use of radioactive phosphorus for the intracranial localisation of brain tumours in patients. Another area of great research interest for Morley was in the use of echoencephalography, where ultrasound was used to delineate the presence of midline shift of structures in the case of intracranial tumours or trauma. As for basic science research work, he was encouraged by Botterell to visit the University of Texas at Galveston to learn about tissue culture of human brain tumours. At Galveston, he studied with Charles M Pomerat, who was the only scientist studying *in vitro* models of brain tumours. One of his seminal contributions to this field was his isolation of circulating glioma cells from the jugular vein from patients harbouring intracranial malignant gliomas. In 1962, he succeeded Botterell as head of the division of neurosurgery at Toronto General Hospital. Two years later, he was appointed as the chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Toronto, a position he held until 1979. He expanded the Toronto residency program to two residents per year and helped form the neurosurgery unit at the Wellesley Hospital in Toronto in 1968. In 1977 and 1979, he summarised the state of neurosurgical training programs in Canada for the neurosurgical literature. Throughout his career, he held numerous leadership positions in medicine and neurosurgery, including president of the Canadian Neurosurgical Society, vice president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons and vice president of the Neurosurgical Society of America. He also maintained his membership of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons. Upon his retirement from surgery in 1985, he turned to a career in letters and was the general editor of the 24 volume Canadian Medical Lives Series, comprising scholarly biographies of distinguished Canadian doctors - capped by his own biography of McKenzie. A total of 50 residents finished either all or a significant part of their training under him. All residents who rotated on the neurosurgical service at Toronto General Hospital with him remember the tradition of tea at 4pm during rounds. He is remembered for his encouraging words to the residents in his formal British accent, his self-deprecating ways, his charm and his incredible wit, albeit sometimes quirky. In his name and honour, and for his early devotion to basic science research in neurosurgery, the Morley prize was created in the division of neurosurgery in 1986 to recognise the neurosurgery resident who has presented the best research paper each year. He embraced his adopted homeland and, by canoe and sailboat, became an ardent explorer of Canada's waterways and wilderness. He also planted thousands of trees, many of which have grown to become mature forests in the Oak Ridges Morraine, Ontario. He died on 29 April 2012 aged 91 and was survived by his wife Helen, their children Jane, Rosamund and David, his son, Luke, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He had an indelible impact on the art and practice of neurosurgery in Canada.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009171
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, Timothy Rowland (1939 - 2023)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2023-04-20
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E010000-E010999/E010200-E010299
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon Spinal surgeon
Details Tim Morley was a consultant spinal surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, where he was a pioneer of scoliosis surgery. He was born on 18 March 1939 in London, the son of Henry Seaward Morley, a physician who became a consultant at the Royal West Sussex Hospital in Chichester and a master of the Society of Apothecaries, and Alison Kathleen Morley née Hill, a housewife. He attended Wellington College, and then Downing College, Cambridge and University College Hospital Medical School. He qualified MRCS LRCP in 1963 and a year later gained his MB BCh. He held junior posts at University College Hospital, as a surgical house officer, medical house officer on the cardiac unit and senior house officer in the trauma and orthopaedic department. From 1966 to 1969 he was a rotating registrar in general surgery, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, urology and orthopaedics at Southampton. He gained his FRCS in 1969 and from 1969 to 1974 he was a registrar, senior registrar and then senior surgical officer at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore. In 1975 he was appointed as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at King’s College Hospital, London, then, in 1978, moved to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore. He was also an honorary consultant at Chailey Heritage Hospital, Lewes (from 1978) and at Guy’s (from 1992). At Stanmore he worked with Charles Manning on the scoliosis unit, succeeding him in 1981. With Peter Webb he pioneered the Webb-Morley instrumentation, improving correction and stability in spinal deformity surgery. He also helped develop a sensory spinal cord monitoring system with Mike Edgar, Andrew Rawford and Steve Jones, from the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, which was adopted internationally. He also developed a scoliosis service on Malta, for which he was awarded a Maltese medal. He wrote on spinal surgery, covering the management of spinal deformity, spinal tumours, instrumentation and the management of the unstable spine. He was an honorary senior lecturer in orthopaedics for the University of London and a specialty regional adviser for the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He was president of the British Scoliosis Society and of the orthopaedic section of the Royal Society of Medicine. Outside medicine he enjoyed sailing (he owned a 47-foot-long sailing boat *Kwa Heri*), game shooting and skiing (he was a member of the British Orthopaedic Ski Group). In 1966 he married Mary, the daughter of the surgeon Noel Frederick Adeney. They had two children, a daughter, Nicky, and a son, Mark. Tim Morley died on 11 January 2023. He was 83.
Resource Identifier RCS: E010228
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
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First Title value, for Searching Marley, Miles P. ( - 1854)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-07-31
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E002000-E002999/E002600-E002699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374841374841
Occupation General surgeon
Details Was entered as a twelve-months' Surgical Pupil to Sir Everard Home at St George's Hospital on May 12th, 1819. He practised at 11 Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, London, W, and was Surgeon to the Institution for Aged and Infirm Journeymen Tailors. After residing at Inverness Villas, Bayswater, he died at Port Isaac, Cornwall, on November 15th, 1854. Publication: *On the Most Frequent Diseases of Children*, 8vo, London, 1830.
Resource Identifier RCS: E002658
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Furley, Edward (1812 - 1892)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2012-01-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001900-E001999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/374101374101
Occupation General surgeon
Details Educated at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and was for a time Lecturer on Practical Anatomy at the Aldersgate School of Medicine. He settled in practice at West Mailing, Kent, in partnership with Peter Montagu Pope, MD. He was appointed Medical Inspector of Private Lunatic Asylums in the County, and on retirement from this post moved to 43 Church Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, where he practised for many years. He died on December 6th, 1892. Publication: "Cases in which Arsenic was productive of Ptyalism." - *Lond Med Gaz*, 1834-5, xvi, 790.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001918
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, John (1885 - 1974)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-02-10
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006700-E006799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378952378952
Occupation General surgeon
Details John Morley was the last of a line of distinguished part-time Professors of Surgery in Manchester. Born on 10 October 1885, the son of the Reverend J S Morley, MA, schoolmaster and clergyman, he was educated at Bishop's Stortford College and Manchester University, where he graduated MB ChB with first class honours in 1908. He was house surgeon to Professor G A Wright and A H Burgess and demonstrator in anatomy to Professor Grafton Elliot Smith, with Geoffrey Jefferson and Harry Platt. He was appointed surgical registrar to Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1911, the year in which he became ChM and FRCS. In 1912, aged 26, he was elected assistant surgeon to Ancoats Hospital, where his surgical colleagues were W R Douglas and Harry Platt. He joined a Territorial Field Ambulance in 1914 'spending three weeks in a field near Bolton' before embarking for Egypt and Gallipoli. There he established a field surgical unit that dealt with large numbers of casualties, often under fire. He was invalided home at the end of 1915 with severe jaundice and dysentery and he spent the rest of the war doing his military duties, civilian hospital work, and private practice at the same time. For his distinguished service at Gallipoli, he was awarded the Croix de Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. Morley was elected assistant surgeon to Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1921. He was a master surgical craftsman, a man of sound judgement and a conscientious teacher and he built up a very large practice. His combination of unflagging industry and technical excellence greatly influenced his students and assistants and many were proud to recall that they were trained by him. He was best known for gastric, thyroid, parathyroid, biliary and pancreatic surgery and for his thorough investigation of the mechanisms of abdominal pain. His observations were made at the bedside and in the operation theatre and radiological studies by E W Twining were added. The results were discussed in his book *Abdominal Pain* published in 1931. He succeeded his former chief, A H Burgess, to the Chair of Clinical Surgery, in 1936. His teachings were lucid and practical and his mordant humour was often directed at idle students. He was President of the Manchester Medico-Legal Society and the Manchester Pathological Society, twice President of the Manchester Medical Society, external adviser in surgery to the University of London, and external examiner to the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Durham. He served on the Court of Examiners 1941-43. The late Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks consulted Denis Poole-Wilson, FRCS in 1947 because of attacks of pain, apparently of renal origin, resulting from gunshot wounds in Bizerta in 1943. The General had already undergone six major abdominal operations. Poole-Wilson correctly traced his problem to his biliary tract and Morley and Poole-Wilson performed a seventh operation in December 1947. 'I was operated on by that fine surgeon and very charming man, Professor Morley. When I came round from the anaesthetic he was holding up a curious looking object which he assured me was a piece of my shirt that had been lurking in my bile duct ever since I was wounded at Bizerta.' When John Morley retired, Geoffrey Jefferson wrote, 'no one in his generation was more widely sought as a consultant or was better trusted as a surgeon.' He retired to the Eden Valley in Cumbria, exercising his skills as a shot and fisherman. His first wife, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, died in 1928. In 1930 he married Dr Margaret Greg, who survives him. His youngest son, a Pilot Officer in the RAF, was killed in action in 1943, aged 20. His elder sons are both surgeons and his daughter, a physiologist, married a physician. Honest John, as he was known, died in 1974 in his 89th year. His example of probity and professional excellence is unlikely to be surpassed.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006769
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Willis, William Morley (1869 - 1918)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-02-13
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E003000-E003999/E003500-E003599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/375761375761
Occupation General surgeon
Details Born in Bristol in 1869 and was educated at Taunton Grammar School. After being in business for some years, he turned to medicine on coming of age and studied at University College, Bristol, where he won prizes in anatomy, and at the Bristol General Hospital he was Martyn Memorial Pathological Scholar and Medallist, later Surgical Casualty Officer. He also studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital. After acting as House Surgeon to the Bristol Hospital for Sick Children and as Resident Medical Officer to the Sunderland Royal Infirmary, he started in practice at Nottingham in 1897. He was appointed Surgeon to the Children's Hospital, and in 1901 Assistant Surgeon to the Nottingham General Hospital, later becoming Surgeon. He restricted his practice to surgery, and during the War (1914-1918) undertook various duties in the Military Hospital of the Nottingham Area. From being apparently in good health, he was struck down by illness and died on June 26th, 1918. He had practised latterly at 7 Regent Street, Nottingham, and was survived by his widow and two daughters. Willis was a brilliant surgeon, a skilful diagnostician, and a most agreeable, kindly, and courteous colleague, always ready to give help and advice in difficult cases, and eager to assist the younger men in any way he could. Publications: "Case of Cerebral Abscess." -*Brit Med Jour*, 1897, i, 330. "Hydatid of the Pleura" (with W B RANSOM). - *Ibid*, 1903, i, 302. "Thrombosis of Lateral Sinus." - *Lancet*, 1903, i, 1662. "Case of Carcinoma of Both Breasts." - *Clinical Jour*, 1908, xxxii, 382.
Resource Identifier RCS: E003578
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, Edward John (1857 - 1941)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2013-11-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E004000-E004999/E004600-E004699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/376874376874
Occupation Military surgeon
Details Morley was educated at Guy's Hospital. After qualifying in 1878-79 he acted as house surgeon and then as resident medical officer at the Northampton General Infirmary. After a period as surgeon to the East Lancashire Infirmary at Blackburn, he entered the Royal Naval Medical Service in 1883. Morley took the Fellowship in 1891. He was promoted fleet-surgeon in 1899 and surgeon-captain in 1910. He saw active service in the war of 1914-18, and later retired to 42 Southbourne Road, Bournemouth. Morley died at Bournemouth on 13 March 1941.
Resource Identifier RCS: E004691
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Hurley, Dennis William Hamilton ( - 1978)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-12-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006500-E006599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378779378779
Occupation General surgeon
Details Very little is known about Dennis William Hamilton Hurley except that he passed the FRCS in 1956 and was working at the Seddon Memorial Hospital, Gore, New Zealand, at the time of his death, thought to be in 1978.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006596
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Hurley, Thomas Ernest (1888 - 1958)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-03-03
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005000-E005099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377255377255
Occupation General surgeon
Details Born in Melbourne in 1888, he was educated at Wesley College and Melbourne University. After qualification he became resident medical officer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1910 and medical superintendent 1912-14. In 1914 he was appointed surgeon to out-patients and in 1927 surgeon to in-patients, retiring in 1947, in which year he became president of the hospital. During the war of 1914-18 he volunteered immediately and served in Egypt, the Dardanelles and France, culminating with an administrative appointment in London in 1918 as ADMS of the AIF. During the war of 1939-45 he was chairman of the Australian Red Cross in 1939-40, but was then selected for the new appointment of Medical Director-General of the RAAF, serving in this capacity from 1940 to 1945. He was a member of the board of examiners of Melbourne University 1936-46 and president in 1950. His other achievements included President of the Australasian College of Surgeons in 1952-53, President of the Federal Council of the BMA. 1949-51, President of the British Commonwealth Medical Conference in 1950, President of the Surgical Section of the Australasian Medical Congress in Perth in 1948, and honorary fellowship of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He was chairman of the Walter and Eliza Hall Research Institute in Melbourne and was an honorary surgeon to the King from 1942 to 1950. As a surgeon he was highly competent, and he had a real flair for administration. He was very good-looking, retaining his youthful appearance to the end, immensely likeable, and one of the outstanding personalities of his generation in Australian surgery. A good athlete in his young days, he found time to be a very competent golfer later. Hurley married in 1919 and had four sons and two daughters, several of whom entered the medical profession. He died on 19 July 1958 in Melbourne.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005072
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Mant, Harold Turley (1880 - 1956)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-03-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005100-E005199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377318377318
Occupation ENT surgeon
Details Born on 12 August 1880 he was educated at University College, London, where he was Bucknill Scholar, and at University College Hospital where he gained the Atkinson Morley surgery scholarship and was house surgeon, demonstrator of anatomy and lecturer on surgical anatomy. During the war of 1914-18 he served in the RAMC with the rank of Major. Subsequently he was appointed ENT surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital and laryngologist to the Royal Chest Hospital. He was, in addition, consulting ENT surgeon to the Royal Northern Hospital and the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital, Aylesbury. From 1932 until 1935 he was consulting ENT surgeon to Willesden General Hospital. He died on 6 February 1956 at Chesham Bois, survived by his wife.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005135
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, Arthur Solomon (1877 - 1962)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-03-28
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005100-E005199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/377363377363
Occupation Anaesthetist General surgeon
Details Born on 18 May 1877 younger son of Alexander Moseley MRCS (1858), surgeon dentist of Craven Hill Gardens; Alexander and his eldest brother Benjamin changed their name to Morley in 1869; they were sons of Ephraim Moseley a surgeon-dentist of Grosvenor Street, were both St George's men, Members of the College, and dental surgeons. Alexander's elder son Frank Morley (1870-1942) MRCS LDS became dental surgeon to St George's. Arthur Morley was educated at University College School and St George's, where he was house physician and house surgeon in 1901. He was assistant medical officer to the South Western Fever Hospital and temporary surgeon to St Mark's Hospital for Diseases of the Rectum. During the first world war he saw active service as a Captain RAMC. He was afterwards anaesthetist to the King George V Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, and the Samaritan Hospital, and was later principal medical referee to various assurance companies. He was a member of the Medico-Legal Society. Morley lived successively at Gordon Square, Upper Wimpole Street, and Devonshire Street, and after retirement at 24 Harley House where he died after long illness on 7 February 1962 aged 84.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005180
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
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First Title value, for Searching Morley, George Henry (1907 - 1971)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-09-18 2018-01-29
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005900-E005999
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378138378138
Occupation Plastic surgeon Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Details Air Vice-Marshal George Henry Morley was born at Portsmouth on 22 February 1907. He went to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School where he qualified with the Conjoint Diploma in 1929. After house appointments he joined the RAF medical service in 1934 and took the FRCS the following year. In 1940 Morley went to the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, where he worked under Sir Archibald Mclndoe and so laid the foundations of his outstanding career as a plastic surgeon with a special interest in the treatment of burns. In 1941 he was appointed to the burns centre at the RAF Hospital, Ely where he spent the next four years. In 1945 he went out to India for a year, returning to Halton where in 1940 he was appointed RAF specialist in plastic surgery. Morley's distinguished service was recognized by his appointment as honorary surgeon to the Queen in 1958, and by the award of the CBE in 1961, and the CB in 1968. In 1961 he was elected President of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, and in 1962 he gave the first Mclndoe Memorial Lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1966 he was made the senior consultant to the RAF. Apart from these professional achievements Morley will be remembered with gratitude by many of his patients and his colleagues for his kindly consideration, and for his dedication to his work and his high principles. In 1944 he married Kathleen Green and they had one son and one daughter. He died suddenly while on holiday in Cornwall on 26 May 1971.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005955
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hurley, Desmond Garvan (1921 - 1999)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-06
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008600-E008699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380877380877
Details Desmond Garvan Hurley was born in Nhill on 24 June 1921, the third of four sons of Dr John and Mrs Greta Garvan Hurley. As there was no other medical practitioner in the town at the time the occasion was unusual in that his father was, of necessity, accoucheur. Like his father and brothers, Desmond was educated at Xavier College, matriculating in l939. He studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and graduated with honours in 1945, winning the Ryan Prize for Medicine at St Vincent's Hospital where he did his residency. He then spent two years working with his father in general practice in Corowa. This was a particularly rewarding period of his life and ever afterwards he would recount stories and anecdotes of his experiences as a country general practitioner. At the end of 1949 he came to England to study surgery. Quickly obtaining the Fellowship he had the very good fortune to become a protégé of Sir Gordon Gordon Taylor who had a significant influence on the formation of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Under Sir Gordon's auspices, Desmond became the first of many Australians to work at the Essex County Hospital in Colchester as a surgical registrar. He then won a prestigious surgical Fellowship to the Mayo Clinic in the United States of America which gave him the opportunity to observe and work with many famous surgeons. Returning to the UK in 1953 Desmond became senior surgical registrar at the Middlesex Hospital in London. While there he took the opportunity to observe the surgical expertise of Norman Tanner in London and Pietro Valdoni in Rome and always said they were the best surgical technicians he had ever seen. In 1954 he returned to Australia. He brought with him many new and modern concepts of surgery and surgical management - in particular, expertise in the theory and practice of intravenous therapy. He obtained the FRACS and was appointed to the surgical staff at St Vincent's where he was to work for the next thirty-two years. He established a large and busy surgical practice both in Melbourne and in Victoria County and became a well-known, highly respected general surgeon, specialising in abdominal surgery in all its varieties and in surgery of the thyroid and the breast. In 1966 he was leader of one of the St Vincent's Hospital Medical and Nursing Teams in South Vietnam. In 1970 Desmond became head of a surgical unit at St Vincent's Hospital. After retirement from the Hospital in 1986 he continued surgical practice for some years and was always available to give generous advice, help and assistance to the many who asked for it. He was a person of great integrity, honest and straightforward, without any meanness in his character. He possessed an enormous gift for friendship, a marvellous sense of humour, sympathy, empathy with and interest in other people. He died on 29 March 1999, after facing his final illness with fortitude and courage, sustained by his strong but undemonstrative faith, and a calm acceptance of the inevitable outcome.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008694
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hurley, Michael Vincent (1893 - 1964)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2014-08-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E005000-E005999/E005800-E005899
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378019378019
Occupation General surgeon
Details Michael Vincent Hurley was born in 1893 and graduated MB BCh in the National University of Ireland in 1919, in Dublin. After holding a number of junior hospital posts in London he passed the Conjoint Examination and also the FRCS in 1923, and became a registrar at Poplar Hospital in 1924. In 1925 Hurley went to the United States and became a Fellow in Surgery at the Mayo Clinic where he worked till 1927. He ultimately settled in New York, where he was appointed associate surgeon to the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled, and surgeon to the New York Polyclinic Hospital, and Adjunct Professor of Surgery at the Polyclinic Medical School. He was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1939 and was a member of the American Medical Association. Michael Hurley died of coronary disease on 29 May 1964 at the age of 71.
Resource Identifier RCS: E005836
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lewis, George Morley (1914 - 1994)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-09-17
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008100-E008199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380328380328
Occupation General practitioner General surgeon
Details George Lewis was born on 24 October 1914 in Bedwas, Monmouthshire, the son of Edgar John Lewis and Ella, née Thomas. His father was a businessman and JP and was also High Sheriff of Monmouthshire in 1936. George was educated at Malvern College, where he gained an entrance scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1933. He was a rowing Blue, and a member of the Cambridge crew which won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in 1936. From Cambridge he went on to St Thomas's Hospital where he qualified in 1939, and subsequently he worked at Botley's Park Hospital in Chertsey and at St Helier Hospital, Carshalton, where he was assistant to Aubrey Mason. During the latter part of the war he served with a field ambulance attached to the Guards' Armoured Division, and took part in the invasion of Normandy and liberation of Brussels. After demobilisation in 1946 he was appointed surgical registrar at the Hammersmith Hospital, and he later became Terence Millin's private assistant at Queen's Gate Clinic in London, working with him until 1954. During this period he also worked at the Brompton Hospital, St James's Hospital, Balham, and the Chelsea Hospital for Women. In 1954 he went to Canada where he demonstrated the Millin prostatectomy technique, and this was followed by two further stints abroad, one as a doctor on a Cable and Wireless ship in the Indian Ocean. On his return to England he took up general practice in Seaford, Sussex, and he worked there until he took early retirement to pursue his many other interests. These included gardening, painting, walking and swimming, as well as carpentry and wood-carving, at which he excelled. In 1939 he married Janet, née Iles, and they had two children, Jeremy, a publisher and writer and Julia, a freelance journalist. George Lewis died on 6 September 1994, survived by his wife and children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008145
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Morley, John Stanley James (1918 - 1998)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-11-18
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008700-E008799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380981380981
Occupation Orthopaedic surgeon
Details John Stanley James Morley was born in Withington, Manchester, on 2 March 1918, the son of John Morley FRCS and Mary Ogilvie Simon, the daughter of a congregational minister. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, Rugby, and University College, Oxford, before completing his clinical studies in Manchester. He was house surgeon at the Hope Hospital, Salford, in 1943, and then joined the RNVR, where he served as a temporary Surgeon Lieutenant. In 1948, he returned to Manchester, to the Royal Infirmary, as a house surgeon to Sir Henry Platt. He was later senior house surgeon at the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital in Oxford. Between 1953 and 1954 he was a general surgical registrar at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospitals. He then went to St Bartholomew's as an orthopaedic registrar. He emigrated to Melbourne, where he was appointed orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Children's and the Alfred Hospitals. He married Ruth Hook in 1957 and they had two daughters and four sons. He listed his hobbies as gardening and trout fishing. He died on 18 December 1998.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008798
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Turk, John Leslie (1930 - 2006)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-12-19
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/372505372505
Occupation Pathologist
Details John Turk was a former professor of pathology at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the College. He was born on 2 October 1930 in Farnborough, Hampshire, where his father was a solicitor. From Malvern, where he specialised in classics, John went up to Guy’s Hospital to read medicine, qualifying with honours and two gold medals in 1953. He did house jobs at Lewisham, where he met his future wife, Terry, and then did his National Service in the RAMC in Egypt and Cyprus, where he developed his interest in pathology. On demobilisation he was appointed senior lecturer at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, working at the Medical Research Council research unit at Mill Hill, going on to be reader at the Institute of Dermatology in the University of London. He was one of the pioneers in clinical and experimental immunology, building on the work of Medawar and Humphreys, and was a founder of the British Society of Immunology. John Turk made important links with deprived and developing nations, where he was able to use his linguistic skills, and became in time an international authority on leprosy. He was appointed Sir William Collins professor of pathology at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences in our College. The author of many articles, he wrote two classic textbooks, *Delayed hypersensitivity* (Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Co., 1967) and *Immunology in clinical medicine* (London, William Heinemann Medical Books, 1969), which became very popular and was translated into many different languages, including Bulgarian and Japanese. In addition he and Sir Reginald Murley edited the collected case books of John Hunter. He was curator of the Hunterian Museum for many years. He was editor of *Clinical and Experimental Immunology* and *Leprosy Review*, was president of the British Society for Immunology and of the section of immunology of the Royal Society of Medicine, and adviser to the World Health Organization on leprosy. His wife Terry was a general practitioner; they had two sons, Simon and Jeremy (a psychiatrist), and three grandchildren. A delightful companion, John Turk was a kind and sensitive man, and a devoted servant of the College, who made him FRCS by election. He suffered from diabetes and died from renal failure and small vessel cerebral disease on 4 June 2006.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000318
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Espiner, Henry John (1932 - 2020)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Sarah Gillam
Publication Date 2020-03-19
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009700-E009799
Occupation General surgeon
Details Henry John ‘Harry’ Espiner was a consultant general surgeon in Bristol who performed some of the earliest laparoscopic surgeries in the UK and developed the Espiner bag, used in keyhole operations. Originally from New Zealand, he was born on 29 January 1932. He studied medicine at Otago University, qualified in 1955 and held posts at Christchurch Hospital, including as a surgical registrar. In the late 1950s he went to the UK for further training, where he worked for Reginald Murley at St Albans and then as a surgical research fellow in Robert Milnes Walker’s university department of surgery at Bristol, investigating regional chemotherapy for head and neck cancer. He was awarded the Moynihan prize of the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland in 1963. He did further surgical training in Bristol and in hospitals in the southwest. In 1968 he was appointed as a consultant surgeon to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Southmead Hospital. With others, he initiated a study of the harmful effects of starch powder used in surgical gloves to make them easier to put on: he found a small number of patients developed a sensitivity to the starch during their recovery, resulting in abdominal pain (‘Hazards of surgical glove powders’ *Br Med J*. 1980 Nov 29;281[6253]:1493-4). Espiner stressed the need to develop a powder free glove and was a member of the panel of surgeons testing and trialling gloves made by the London Rubber Company. The newly developed latex gloves were widely adopted. Realising the potential of keyhole surgery for gallbladder removal, Espiner organised a sabbatical to the United States to learn the method and gain experience. Early on it was realised that during surgery the gallbladder might rupture during extraction through the small incision in the abdomen wall, spilling the contents into the wound or back into the abdomen. Espiner went on to design a bag in which the gallbladder could be placed before extraction, containing any potential spillage. As keyhole surgery developed, different bags were produced to hold a range of organs. Espiner formed a company Espiner Medical to develop the sacs. While working in Exeter, Espiner met Antonia ‘Toni’ Buncher, a South African nursing sister. They married in 1964, and had five children, Joanna, Claire, Mark, Tom and Charlotte. Predeceased by his wife in August 2019, Espiner died on 16 February 2020. He was 88.
Resource Identifier RCS: E009715
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Henriques, Cecil Quixano (1924 - 2008)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Sir Barry Jackson
Publication Date 2009-03-13 2009-06-04
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000600-E000699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372783372783
Occupation General surgeon
Details Cecil Quixano Henriques was a consultant surgeon at Ipswich and East Suffolk hospitals. He was born on 22 February 1924 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, the son of Wilfrid Quixano Henriques OBE, a civil engineer, and Beatrice Ledward (née Forde), Cecil Henriques was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read natural sciences. In 1945 he entered St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, London, from where he qualified in 1948. He was a house officer and casualty officer at St Thomas’ Hospital, before spending two years National Service in the Royal Navy as a surgeon lieutenant on HMS Britannia at Dartmouth. On demobilization he became a registrar at the Royal Northern Hospital, where he was greatly influenced by Sir Reginald Murley and R J McNeil Love. He then moved to King’s College Hospital, London, where he completed his training, becoming a research fellow and senior registrar. Here he was influenced by Sir Cecil Wakeley, Sir Edward Muir and Harold C Edwards. During his time at King’s he was successful in winning the John Everidge research prize in both 1957 and 1960. He was appointed consultant surgeon at Ipswich and East Suffolk hospitals in 1960, where he practised for the rest of his career, retiring in 1988. In 1961 he gave a Hunterian Lecture based on his research at King’s on the veins of the vertebral column and their role in the spread of cancer, some of the experimental work also being carried out at the Buckston Browne Research Farm. This lecture was published in the Annals in 1962, the same year in which he gave an Arnott Demonstration. For several years he was an examiner in surgery for the University of Cambridge and at the College he was a surgical tutor between 1964 and 1971. He had the reputation of being a highly skilled technical surgeon, but was noted for being conservative in his choice of management; if an operation could be avoided, so much the better. Immaculate in dress, in the operating theatre he always wore a pair of Royal Naval officers’ half brogue white leather deck shoes and in private life was never seen without a jacket and tie. He was also noted for owning a succession of Daimler cars. He was a skilled politician in hospital committees, usually winning the day in matters of debate. In retirement he enjoyed gardening and living a quiet country life with his wife Faith (née Sanderson), by whom he had three children. He died on 21 July 2008 in Saxmundham, Suffolk.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000600
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Williams, David Knapman (1927 - 1980)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-13
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007000-E007099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379225379225
Occupation Obstetrician and gynaecologist
Details David Knapman Williams, one of two children and the only son of Colin Knapman and Elsie Williams, was born on 8 December 1927. He was educated at the Royal Commercial Travellers' School and then went to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College where he graduated in 1951. After a first resident appointment in Southampton he spent a year as house surgeon in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at St Bartholomew's. There followed two years of National Service in Germany at Oldenburg and Berlin. On demobilisation he returned to obstetrics and gynaecology at Bristol, followed by appointments at Queen Charlotte's Hospital and the Samaritan Hospital for Women in London, Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, and then back to St Bartholomew's Hospital where he became senior lecturer in 1963. He was appointed to the consultant staff at his teaching hospital in 1966, and later to the consultant staff of Putney Hospital and St Teresa's Hospital, Wimbledon. David was a fine clinician with good clinical judgement and was an excellent communicator with both students and patients. Not surprisingly, he quickly built up a flourishing private practice but gave generously to every aspect of his work in the National Health Service. He constantly taught his students the importance of understanding their patients and of becoming truly compassionate doctors. He wrote papers on a wide variety of subjects within his speciality, but his main interests were in problems of the menopause and the organisation of 'well woman' clinics. Outside medicine he had a love of the arts and especially music, though he only learned to play the piano in the last years of his life. During February 1980 he suffered an extensive myocardial infarct which resulted in such severe cardiac damage that his recovery was very slow and incomplete. Two months later it became evident that the functional damage was such that only a cardiac transplant could restore him to normal health. The preliminary screening and preparation was undertaken by his cardiologist colleagues at Bart's and he was then transferred to Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, where a transplant operation was done by Terence English. He made an excellent recovery and the then President of the College, Sir Reginald Murley, took the opportunity of sending messages of congratulation to both the patient and his surgeon, it being the first occasion on which a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons had had a heart transplant by another Fellow of the College. With such promising early progress, the patient began a little clinical work but on 27 August 1980 he was re-admitted to hospital for a routine checkup and died of arrhythmia during his sleep. He was a man of immense faith and courage who, in the early days of cardiac transplantation, boldly faced up to the implications of his illness and expressed his appreciation to every one of his colleagues who cared for him. When he died on 29 August 1980 he was survived by his mother and sister.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007042
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Lewin, Walpole Sinclair (1915 - 1980)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-01-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006600-E006699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378863378863
Occupation Neurosurgeon
Details Walpole Sinclair Lewin was born on August 20, 1915. His father died while he was very young. After a brilliant career at school he entered university as an exhibitioner and qualified from University College Hospital in 1939. After resident appointments at UCH he proceeded to FRCS in 1940 and at the London MS in 1942. Joining the RAMC he was posted to the Head Injuries Military Hospital at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where he came under the influence of Sir Hugh Cairns. He subsequently served in the Middle East, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in charge of a surgical division. In due course he was to follow Cairns as consultant neurosurgeon to the Army. His outstanding ability and inexhaustible energy had been spotted by Cairns and at the end of the war he was appointed assistant surgeon and lecturer to the Nuffield Department of Neurosurgery at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. In 1955 he became consultant neurosurgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, and was tireless in helping to set up the new medical school. He enjoyed an international reputation as a neurosurgeon but it was in the field of head injuries that his contributions will be best remembered. He was invited to give the Ruscoe Clarke Lecture in Birmingham in 1967 and the Victor Horsley Memorial Lecture in 1975 and many other honours flowed his way. At the British Medical Association he was an outstanding committee man and chaired the Central Committee for Hospital Services and the Central Council and in recognition of his services he was awarded the BMA's Gold Medal in 1979. In many other spheres he achieved distinction, becoming Chairman of the World Medical Association, World Federation of Medical Education, Standing Committee of Doctors on the EEC and the Commonwealth Medical Association. He was a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, and University College, London. He served with distinction on the General Medical Council until his death. He was appointed CBE in 1978. He was elected to the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons and became Vice-President 1976-1977, he was still serving on Council when he died from a cerebral haemorrhage on 23 January 1980. A service of thanksgiving, attended by the President and Council of the College was held at Great St Mary's Church in Cambridge on 15 March, 1980 when the lessons were read by Sir Reginald Murley, PRCS and Dr Grabham, Chairman of the Council of the BMA. The address was given by Sir Thomas Holmes-Sellors, Past President of the College. Walpole Lewin was a quiet, unassuming man of great integrity and his serious mien disguised a warm heart and nice sense of humour. He was happily married but tragically his wife, Marion (née Cumming), whom he had married in 1947 died the year before he did. They had a daughter, Caroline, and a son.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006680
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Vartan, Charles Keith (1907 - 1996)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-08
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008300-E008399
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380558380558
Occupation General surgeon
Details Charles Vartan was born on 11 November 1907 at Sandiacre, Nottinghamshire, where his father, Charles Samuel Vartan, was a general practitioner and his mother was Florence Ethel, née Hepworth. His grandfather was Dr P K Vartan who in 1861 had founded the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society's Hospital in Nazareth. Charles was educated at George Watson's College, Edinburgh, at Bishop Stortford College and at St Bartholomew's Medical College, where he qualified in 1930. As a prize-winning student he had no difficulty in getting jobs in his teaching hospital, and with his FRCS in 1932 served a long spell as 'resident assistant physician accoucheur', as St Bartholomew's chose to designate its obstetric trainee. He was house surgeon to Harold Wilson and Geoffrey Keynes; resident intern under Dr's Barris and Donaldson; junior demonstrator of pathology and holder of the Luther Holden Research Scholarship. In 1938 he was appointed gynaecologist to the War Memorial Hospital in Woolwich and later medical director of the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, also in Woolwich. He said of himself that he learnt to regard the midwife as the specialist in normal midwifery and he was very proud subsequently to have been elected a Vice-President of the Royal College of Midwives. During the war he served in the Emergency Medical Service and received a commendation for 'brave conduct in civil defence'. He published a series of papers on his specialty, became a member of the College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1935 and a Fellow of the now Royal College in 1949, where he was later a member of Council. He examined for his College, the Conjoint Board and the Central Midwives' Board. He enjoyed the company of his colleagues as Chairman of the Greenwich Division of the BMA, and as President of the Section of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the Royal Society of Medicine. He became a Liveryman of the Loriners Company in 1946 and was Master of the Company in 1980. In retirement he was invited to become the first Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the University of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and greatly enjoyed the experience. In 1935 he married Marjorie Norah Mitchell, SRN, by whom he had four children: Angela, a haematologist in Oxford, Charles, a general practitioner in Poole, Hilary, married to a GP, and a son who predeceased him. His interests were watching rugby and cricket (he was a past president of Blackheath Cricket Club), philately and bridge. In 1990 he wrote to the College Secretary commenting that he had just read Sir Reginald Murley's *Surgical roots and branches*: 'on page 307 I read "for some years a strenuous effort has been made to collect *curriculum vitae* from the Fellows themselves." In order to save this committee from having to make a strenuous effort on my behalf I enclose a CV which I prepared for the *BMJ*'. He died on 1 January 1996, survived by his wife and three of his children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008375
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Dunn, David Christy (1939 - 1998)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-10-23
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E008000-E008999/E008500-E008599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/380750380750
Occupation General surgeon
Details David Dunn was a former consultant surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. He was born on 12 February 1939. His father was British and his mother came from Iceland. He was one of four children, and received his early education at the Forest School, London. He went on to St John's College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences and medicine, where he rowed for the Lady Margaret Boat Club and was a member of the Goldie boat. He did his clinical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital. After an appointment as house surgeon at Bart's, he returned to Cambridge as a demonstrator in the department of anatomy, combining this with supervising students from St John's and Trinity Colleges. Before starting surgical training, he served as a medical officer to the British East Greenland Expedition in 1966, followed by two years as registrar at St Albans under Sir Reginald Murley. He then returned to Cambridge as senior registrar and was appointed consultant and assistant director of research at Addenbrooke's Hospital in 1974. There, with Sir Roy Calne, he was involved with research into the mechanisms of rejection of organ grafts and immunosuppressive drugs. At first he worked mainly in vascular, gastrointestinal and neonatal surgery, but then saw the potential of endoscopic surgery, then in its infancy. This was to become his principal interest for the remainder of his professional life. His knowledge and skill with laparoscopic surgery was recognised by his colleagues who elected him President of the Association of Endoscopic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland. He also had considerable computer skills, and devised a system for the management of clinical information and data which for a time had commercial possibilities. He led the comparative audit unit at the College. David had a formidable reputation as a teacher. He was director of medical studies at St John's College for several years and produced, with Nigel Rawlinson, a new surgical textbook for students, *Surgical diagnosis and management: a guide to general surgical care* (Oxford, Blackwell Scientific, 1985). He travelled widely in his own right and as a member of the Moynihan Chirurgical Club, of which he was President from 1994 to 1995. A talented painter, he would produce at the end of each trip a portfolio of sketches of club members and their wives, which he would reproduce and sell for charity. He had several exhibitions of his water-colours. He had wide outdoor interests: he enjoyed fast cars, held a flying licence and flew Tiger Moths with the Cambridge Flying Club, and continued to coach the Cambridge blue boat. As treasurer of the University Boat Club, he used his computer skills to plan the weight distribution of members of the crew and the tactical plans for the race. He was a tall good-looking man with a most attractive manner and a ready smile. His wife Anne, whom he married in 1969, came from Denmark: they had three daughters and two sons, who were also successful oarsmen. One became a doctor. At the height of his surgical career, when he was 53, David developed myeloma. At first there was a full response to treatment, but the disease relapsed and he died on 19 August 1998.
Resource Identifier RCS: E008567
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Fuller, Alan Pearce (1929 - 2010)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Geraint Fuller
Publication Date 2010-09-30 2013-10-11
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373208373208
Occupation ENT surgeon
Details Alan Fuller was an ENT surgeon at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He was born in Swansea on 18 March 1929, one of three sons, but the only one to survive more than 24 hours. His mother, Sarah Ann (née Williams), was later an hotelier and his father Frank Austin, who died when Alan was five years old, was on the sales staff of a firm of furniture manufacturers. His mother remarried, but Alan's stepfather later died when Alan was 12 years old. He was educated at Swansea Grammar School and in 1946 won a major county scholarship to St Bartholomew's Medical College. Alan was in the first entry after the college returned from evacuation to Queens' College, Cambridge. The entry was mainly made up of ex-servicemen, and for the first time women were admitted to the college. As a student he worked on the Clifford Naunton Morgan firm at the time when Reginald Murley was chief assistant. After qualifying, he held house appointments in general and ENT surgery, and a senior ENT house surgeon post in Swansea. He was able to do his National Service in the RAMC (1953 to 1955) as a junior specialist in otology as he had obtained the DLO in 1953. He served with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), in Singapore and in Malaya during the Malayan emergency. Whilst in Singapore he, with a fellow Bart's student, Michael Pugh, co-founded the Rahere dining club. On return from National Service he completed his ENT training at the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, before returning to Bart's in 1959 as chief assistant (senior registrar). Here he was much influenced by F C W Capps and (Sir) Cecil Hogg. He was appointed to the consultant staff of St Bartholomew's in 1963 and was also on the staff of Ealing Hospital (1963 to 1985), the Mile End Hospital (1964 to 1968), and later the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children and the Royal Masonic Hospital. Fuller was an enthusiastic teacher who served St Bart's Medical College as assistant dean (1971), sub-dean in charge of discipline (from 1972 to 1978) and admissions dean (1981 to 1985). He was president of the student's union and a keen supporter of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society and the rugby club (he had played in the second row as a student). Fuller had once unwittingly won an informal competition held by junior doctors at Bart's for the 'loudest tie of the week', but he later adopted bow ties after he found normal ones were grabbed by playful children while he looked in their ears. In 1973 Bart's celebrated the 850th anniversary of its foundation. Among the events was an outdoor play. Alan Fuller's perceived resemblance, in stature and beard, to King Henry VIII caused him to be cast as the monarch who had given Bart's a Royal Charter. In November 1982, Alan Fuller was summoned to King Edward VII Hospital, London, to attend HM Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who had choked on a salmon bone which she could not dislodge. He removed it under a general anaesthetic given by his colleague Bryan Gillet. The Queen Mother, a keen angler, declared: "The salmon have got their own back". Some 11 years later the same problem happened to her again. Alan Fuller examined in surgery for the University of London, was a member of the Court of Examiners (from 1984 to 1990) and an external examiner for the ENT fellowship examination of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (from 1990 to 1992). He served on the councils and was a vice-president of both ENT sections of the Royal Society of Medicine. A delightful companion and most clubbable man, he was secretary of the Rahere Lodge for years, an enthusiastic member of the 17th London General Hospital Territorial Army (TA), a member of the Savage Club, and a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Barbers. As a painter in pastels and watercolour he belonged to the London Sketch Club and the Medical Art Society (president from 1993 to 1996). He also in late life enjoyed rough shooting and sailing his hand built dingy aptly named *Incus*. Allan Fuller met Janet Marina Williams (known as 'Nini'), a professional caterer, on New Year's Eve 1956, successfully proposed to her on St Valentine's Day 1957 and married her the following month. Their happy married life culminated in their golden wedding anniversary celebrated the year before Nini died after a short illness. Alan Fuller's last years were clouded by Alzheimer's disease. He died on 6 May 2010, and was survived by his son, Geraint, who is a consultant neurologist, and two daughters, Rowena and Charlotte.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001025
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Bates, Michael (1917 - 1985)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-04-17
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007100-E007199
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379294379294
Occupation Thoracic surgeon
Details Michael Bates, the second son and youngest of three children of Tom Bates, a surgeon, was born in Worcester in July 1917. There were strong surgical roots in the family, his father being surgeon to the Worcester Royal Infirmary for 34 years, while his paternal grandfather - another Tom Bates - and an uncle, Mark Bates, had also been surgeons to the Infirmary. Michael's mother was 42 when he was born and he had a relatively lonely childhood as his siblings were much older. Moreover he had been born with a sightless left eye and, at the age of six, due to what would now be regarded as quite needless anxiety that the left eye might damage its healthy fellow, the blind eye was removed. At the age of seven he went to Aymestry School where the accent was on discipline, fair play, games and the study of wildlife. Indeed he was so happy there that he ultimately directed that his ashes should be scattered on the school cricket field. His education continued at Radley School, where despite the missing eye, he became an excellent cricketer and captained the first eleven. He then followed his father and grandfather to St Bartholomew's Hospital where he captained the first cricket team and qualified in 1941. After a surgical house job and registrar appointment with J E H Roberts at Bart's, he served in the RAMC in the Far East from 1945 to 1948 before returning to O S Tubbs' unit in the Bart's sector hospital at St Albans, and then at the Brompton Hospital for further training in thoracic surgery with O S Tubbs and Russell (later Lord) Brock. He completed the final FRCS in 1949 and was appointed consultant thoracic surgeon at North Middlesex and Broomfield (Colchester) Hospitals in 1952. At North Middlesex he developed an excellent regional thoracic centre, building upon the earlier work of Ivor Lewis who had also done general surgery. Closed cardiac surgery was also undertaken but, to his regret, he was never able to develop open cardiac work there. It was some compensation to him that he was later appointed thoracic surgeon to the Royal Northern Hospital in 1969, and was invited to join the Royal Free Hospital staff in 1979. His inexhaustible energy in his earlier years at North Middlesex and Colchester had enabled him to collect thoracic patients from a large part of the then North East Metropolitan region, and as a result he was able to give a notable Hunterian lecture in 1980, based upon no less than 2430 personal thoracotomies for bronchial carcinoma, possibly the largest personal series ever published. He was a regular participant in hospital clinical meetings and ran a popular thoracic surgical course for the final FRCS at North Middlesex Hospital. Despite his monocular vision he never had the slightest difficulty in operating and, more remarkably, he was able to strike a fast moving cricket ball with skill. Bates was President of the Thoracic Society in 1980, and of the Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons in 1982, the year of his retirement from the NHS. It was a source of bitter disappointment to him that the fine thoracic unit which he had developed at North Middlesex Hospital was closed down shortly afterwards. At about this time he developed peritonitis from a perforated carcinoma of the rectosigmoid region and had a succession of four abdominal operations which he withstood with calm and courage during the last eighteen months of his life. He had recently completed the editing of a book on bronchial carcinoma which was published in 1984. During his early resident appointments he had married Jean Young, a Bart's nurse, but they were divorced nine years later. There were two sons of that marriage, the elder of whom, a fourth generation doctor and the third surgical "Tom", is now a general surgeon at the William Harvey Hospital in Kent. Following the second world war, Michael married another Bart's nurse, Nancy Cranston Brown, by whom he had four daughters, the second of whom qualified at Bart's and is now practising ophthalmology. In the last year of his life, he gave his second daughter in marriage, spent four months at his holiday home in Cyprus, visited his second son in California and attended his youngest daughter's graduation at Durham just six weeks before his death. When he died at his home on 17 August 1985, aged 68, he was survived by his first and second wives and by his six children. Following his cremation his ashes were scattered on the cricket field at his old preparatory school. A Thanksgiving service was held at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great on 2 November 1985 when the address was given by Sir Reginald Murley, KBE, TD, past President of the College.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007111
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Williams, Ivor Glyn (1907 - 1989)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-08-14
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007700-E007799
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/379947379947
Occupation General surgeon Radiotherapist
Details Ivor Glyn Williams, the third son of Josiah Williams, a wholesale grocer, and of Ellen Williams (née Rowlands), was born at Pwllheli, North Wales, on 29 August 1907. He was educated at Pwllheli Grammar School and the University of London, before graduating in 1931 at the Middlesex Hospital where he was successively house physician, house surgeon, obstetric house physician and house surgeon to the ENT department. He recorded his indebtedness at this stage to W Sampson Handley, Gordon Gordon-Taylor, Victor Bonney, Eric Pearce Gould and David Patey. After securing his FRCS in 1936 he decided to specialise in radiotherapy and was appointed assistant radiotherapist to the Meyerstein Institute where he joined BW (later Sir Brian) Windeyer. He soon had the distinction of being awarded a Rockefeller Travelling Scholarship (1938-1939) to study megavoltage radiotherapy which was then in its early stages in the United States. He visited many of the major cancer centres there and developed several lifelong friendships, notably with CD Haagensen of Columbia Medical Center, though he never shared that great man's enthusiasm for radical mastectomy. During the second world war "IG" as he was widely known, worked at the Middlesex and at Mount Vernon Hospital, Northwood, serving both as radiotherapist and general surgeon to the Emergency Medical Service. He and Brian Windeyer, together with Professor (later Sir) Alan Moncrieff, took a particular interest in childhood malignant disease at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street. In 1944 he was appointed consultant radiotherapist to Cardiff Royal Infirmary. By 1947 he was back in London as the first director of the new independent department of radiotherapy at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he had a large complement of beds widely scattered around the hospital. Despite the disadvantages of such geographical spread, "IG" always regarded this as giving him a unique opportunity to bring his staff into close touch with every medical and surgical unit. He also had charge of the only one million volt X-ray therapy machine, installed as early as 1936 by the generosity of Lady Houston and used uninterruptedly throughout the war. After analysing the early results he extended the techniques for management of advanced rectal and cervical carcinoma, and also for treatment of tumours of the thymus and glomus jugulare. All this was achieved in collaboration with colleagues in many different specialties, leading on to the acquisition of a 15 MV linear accelerator with both X-ray and electron beams for clinical and experimental research. After a collaborative review with Reginald Murley and Michael Curwen of the Bart's breast cancer experience in the 1930s (which included the significantly conservative practice of Sir Geoffrey Keynes), the group had no hesitation in advocating simple surgery with or without radiotherapy. Williams was a notable exponent both of more kindly surgery and radiotherapy, ever ready to spare his patients the ordeal of needless overtreatment and thereby collaborating happily with many surgeons from outside St Bartholomew's. He also made notable contributions with the ophthalmologist, HB Stallard, to the treatment of retinoblastoma. With the recognition that malignant disease was second only to accident as a cause of death in childhood, it was natural for the Hospital for Sick Children to turn to IG Williams when developing treatment facilities. Although he regularly visited and formulated treatment policies with his many paediatric colleagues there, he rightly persuaded them that it would be in the best interests of their young patients to have the radiotherapy at Bart's. His vast experience in this field was shown in his book *Tumours of childhood* (1972). Although an outstanding exponent of his specialty, IG was first and foremost a kindly doctor; his compassionate management of patients, young and old, was a joy to behold. Glyn had a well earned international reputation in paediatric oncology, whilst nationally he had been President of both the British Institute of Radiology in 1956, and of the Radiology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1968. Under his kindly direction his department became ever more highly regarded by a wide range of clinicians in many specialties. He was a quiet man and a rather private person with a delightful sense of humour. He married Dora Hughes in 1936 and they had one daughter and one son. On retiring from his hospital appointments in 1972 he and Dora returned to North Wales, close to his birthplace, where he happily cultivated his garden and enjoyed the companionship of family and friends. During that period he happily survived the elective resection of an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta and a gastric resection for cancer, as well as a succession of Stokes-Adams attacks which were relieved by cardiac pacemaker. When he died suddenly at Pwllheli on 9 June 1989, aged 81, he was survived by his wife and children.
Resource Identifier RCS: E007764
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Kinmonth, John Bernard (1916 - 1982)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2015-01-23 2015-05-22
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E006000-E006999/E006600-E006699
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/378843378843
Occupation General surgeon Vascular surgeon
Details John Bernard Kinmonth, the elder son and eldest of four children of Dr George Henry Kinmonth and Delia Kinmonth (née Daly), was born on 9 May 1916 in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland. As a result of the troubles the family migrated to England in 1920 when Dr Kinmonth set up his general practice in Dulwich. After education at Dulwich College Preparatory School and Dulwich College, where he passed the London First MB as an external student, John entered St Thomas's Hospital and qualified in 1938. Appointed as house surgeon there he then became surgical registrar and resident assistant surgeon before entering the RAF medical service as a surgical specialist in 1943 and attaining the rank of Wing-Commander. After war service spent mainly in West Africa he returned to civilian life as a surgical research assistant at St Bartholomew's Hospital in 1947. There followed two years as a research fellow in Professor Churchill's department of the Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital. On returning from the USA he became assistant director of the surgical professorial unit at St Bartholomew's Hospital under Sir James Paterson Ross. In 1955 he was appointed surgeon to St Thomas's Hospital and director of the surgical professorial unit there in succession to Professor George Perkins who, though then an orthopaedic surgeon, had set up the unit after the second world war. Kinmonth had to overcome many problems, notably a lack of accommodation in his extensively war damaged hospital, but he always acknowledged the help and support which he then received from Norman Barrett. During the ensuing years he made outstanding contributions to surgery, especially in the peripheral vascular field. However, he was also responsible for setting up the cardiopulmonary by-pass work which he was able to hand on as a going concern to his later appointed cardiac surgical colleagues. In 1962, in collaboration with two colleagues in the United States (Charles Rob of Rochester, New York, a former student contemporary, and Fiorindo Simeone of Boston) he published a combined work on vascular surgery. Presidency of the European Society of Cardiovascular Surgery followed in 1968, and of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain in 1973. He was also Vice-President of the International Society of Cardiovascular Surgery and became an honorary member of surgical and vascular surgical societies and allied bodies in many overseas countries, notably Brazil, Ceylon, Denmark, France, Jamaica, Peru and the United States, and he had been consultant in vascular surgery to the RAF since 1957. But it was for his seminal research and publications on the lymphatic vascular system that he earned international renown though at first many of his colleagues were slow to recognise the practical implications of his work. This brought recognition in the twice awarded Julius Mickle Fellowship of the University of London; the Asellius Medal of the International Society of Lymphology and honorary membership of that society. He had the distinction of being the first Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists in 1975 and became an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 1976. He was also a member of the German Society of Lymphology and Freyer Medallist of University College, Galway. During this period he undertook many distinguished overseas lectureships, notably an Arthur Sims Commonwealth Travelling Professorship on behalf of the Royal Colleges when he and his wife visited India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 1962-63. He was Arris and Gale Lecturer in 1953 and Hunterian Professor of the College in 1954, and was elected to Council in 1977. During the last thirteen years of his life, intermittently at first and later more persistently, he was dogged by ill health due to recurrent pancreatitis which was long thought to be due to a benign stricture in the main pancreatic duct. He underwent three major operations before the diagnosis of pancreatic carcinoma was established by ERCP examination and biopsy. Few but his closest friends and colleagues were privy to all this, but during that period he published his pioneer book on the lymphatics in 1972 followed by a superb second edition a few months before his death. Apart from his outstanding contributions to surgery he was a keen student of music and opera, and also of ornithology and photography. He and his brother had been introduced to sailing by an uncle at an early age; later in life, with his friend Dr Richard Warren of Boston, Massachusetts, he became joint owner of a Block Island fibreglass yawl in which he much enjoyed ocean cruising, a subject on which he wrote several articles. He was a reserved and strikingly handsome man whose guiding professional principles were patience and persistence in the pursuit of excellence. His younger brother, Maurice, also graduated from St Thomas's Hospital before his appointment as consultant plastic surgeon in Leicester. John had married Kathleen Godfrey, a daughter of Admiral W H Godfrey, in 1947 and they had two daughters and two sons, the elder of whom is medically qualified. He faced his last few years with dignity and courage and underwent a fourth laparotomy only a week before he died on 16 September 1982. He was survived by his brother and two sisters and by his wife and children. A memorial service was held in the Priory Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, 10 November, 1982 and the address was given by Sir Reginald Murley, PPRCS.
Resource Identifier RCS: E006660
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Hartley, Charles Edwin (1922 - 2009)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2010-09-30
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001000-E001099
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373212373212
Occupation General surgeon missionary
Details Charles Hartley served much of his professional life as a missionary and surgeon at Vom Christian Hospital, Nigeria. He later entered general practice in Falmouth. He was born in Newcastle, Staffordshire, on 22 January 1922. His father was Harold Hartley, a senior consulting surgeon at North Staffordshire Hospital, who had won a gold medal for his London MD in 1902. His mother was Janet Stuart née Laird, the second woman to gain the FRCS Edinburgh with the gold medal. Together with Elsie Inglis of the Scottish Women’s Hospital, she went to Serbia, to provide medical services for the White Russians. His mother died when Charles was 13, and he recalled being told by his housemaster “not to cry, as it was selfish”. His two older brothers went to Eton, but when it was time for young Charles to be educated, his father’s finances were somewhat constrained. He was educated first at Summer Field School, Oxford, and then went to Epsom College (from 1934 to 1939), where he was encouraged to enter medicine. As a rather shy bespectacled schoolboy, he had a good academic record before going to Peterhouse College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences in a foreshortened two year course. From 1939 to 1941, he captained the Peterhouse tennis team and was the only medical student in his year. In his first few days as an undergraduate he received an invitation to attend a ‘fresher’s squash’, a meeting for newcomers aimed at giving a Christian message. The speaker was ‘Jim’ (Charles Gordon) Scorer, a Cambridge graduate from Emmanuel College, who gave an evangelical talk that impressed at least one young undergraduate. Charles was also influenced in his early spiritual journey by a contemporary at Peterhouse, John Swinbank, later chaplain to Bradfield College. Charles went to St Bartholomew’s Hospital for his clinical training, but, because of the war, spent only three months in Smithfield, with much of his clinical training taking place at Hill End Hospital, St Albans and later at Friern Hospital. In his first year Charles Hartley lodged in St Albans and was provided with full board and lodging for performing regular Air Raid Precaution (ARP) duties. In the second year, he was billeted in Hill End Hospital, much liked by students, nurses and resident doctors because of the friendly and informal atmosphere, not apparent in Smithfield. The rather gloomy atmosphere at Friern Barnet in his final year was offset by excellent ‘digs’, run by a Miss Pepper, a staunch Congregationalist. She encouraged the students to attend the local church, run by one of the first female ministers in the UK, the Reverend Elsie Chamberlain, who was married to the local Anglican priest. Charles won the Brackenbury prize in surgery, the Matthews Duncan prize and gold medal in midwifery and gynaecology and the Walsham prize in surgical pathology. He was house surgeon to (Sir) James Paterson Ross and John Hosford at a time when Reggie Murley became chief assistant. He then became chief assistant in neurosurgery to John O’Connell and passed the primary FRCS. In 1947 Charles Hartley entered the RAMC as a surgical specialist in Graz and on trains from Trieste to the Hook of Holland. Towards the end of his National Service, he developed jaundice and was admitted to hospital for several weeks. Once he was demobilised, Charles felt he should go abroad as a missionary. As part of his training, he took a crash correspondence course with the London Bible College, did surgical locums and ironed out gaps in his knowledge, passed the final FRCS at the third attempt and the DTM&H after a course in tropical medicine. The Sudan United Missionary Society desperately needed a surgeon in northern Nigeria, and Charles set sail for Lagos in 1953. The Vom Hospital stood on a 4,000 foot high plateau. The work at this newly built hospital was demanding. On operating days he worked from dawn to dusk: caesarean sections were common emergencies, and he became adept at treating patients with vesicovaginal fistula. In quieter moments he explored the countryside, indulged in bird watching and added to his carefully annotated researches on the history of art. Despite poor health, he was determined to explore Africa and made the long journey to Lake Chad and then back along the river Benue. He left the mission field in 1966, after some 15 years of service. After extensive investigations at Bart’s, he was found to have contracted a rare form of leprosy. After treatment, he was left with a weak leg and decided to give up surgery. He became a GP in Falmouth. Charles loved the work as it brought new challenges. He retired from general practice reluctantly at the age of 60, but continued to work for the National Blood Transfusion Service across Cornwall until 1992, when he reached 70. He enjoyed golf and was an active member of the Falmouth Baptist church. He first met Ruth E A Doble, a nurse at Bart’s, in the sluice room of the operating theatre at Hill End Hospital. They married in February 1947, and had two daughters, Jane Deborah, born in 1948, who became a teacher, and Philippa Ruth, born in 1950, who became a solicitor. One of Charles’ hobbies during his time as a GP was collecting old Bibles. His was the second largest private collection and included first edition authorised versions and a psalter that had belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots. When his daughter Philippa sadly died of breast cancer in 2004, he lost heart for collecting and sold his collection at Sotherby’s for £250,000, with which he established the Bible Heritage Trust, a charity supporting Christian missions at home and abroad. Charles Hartley died on 6 October 2009, after four weeks of increasing weakness, but remained mentally alert to the last. He was survived by his daughter Jane, her husband, their three surviving children (Anna Grace, John Melville and Esther Ivy) and Philippa’s two children, Jonathan Hugh and Naomi Ruth.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001029
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Naylor, Henry Gordon (1937 - 2010)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2011-11-10 2012-03-21
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373745373745
Occupation General surgeon
Details Henry Naylor, always known as 'Harry', was a consultant general surgeon to the Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust and trained at the Royal Free Hospital in London. He was for a time medical director at Basildon Hospital. He had a fine reputation as a surgeon, and as a teacher he was very popular with London Hospital graduates. His family roots were in the countryside near Burnley in Lancashire. His father, Tom Naylor, was a 'weights and measures' inspector and his mother, Grace née Leaver, worked in the mills after leaving school early, as did her three brothers. The couple married in 1935. After qualifying, Tom was promoted, and he and Grace moved to Batley in Yorkshire, where Harry was born on 3 February 1937. Tom Naylor served in the Army during the Second World War, and sadly died of starvation and dysentery in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in south-east Asia. Grace and young Harry moved back to Burnley to live with her brother, Bruce Leaver, and her sister-in-law Annie. She did not know her husband's fate for several years after the war. The Leavers had one son Kenneth, several years younger than Harry, and the two boys were more like brothers than cousins, and developed a lifelong relationship. Harry went to a local primary school and passed the 11-plus scholarship to Burnley Grammar School. Hating school dinners, he went home each day for lunch. Out of school, he was taught to smoke by his uncles on the Leaver side of the family, a habit that lasted for many years. Harry joined the local scout group; the scoutmaster was the Reverend Harry Hardman, a late entrant to the Church of England. He married young Harry's mother in 1951. Stepfather Harry served in several rural parishes and exerted a great influence on his 14-year-old stepson, encouraging in him a deep love and appreciation of the countryside. In 1954 Harry went to the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road to study medicine. Even in his student days he was a charismatic character and enjoyed life to the full. Having failed the second MB at the first attempt, he mixed with students in the next intake. As a result, he met Ann Worsfold in 1960 and married her the following year. They had no children. House appointments followed qualification. He enjoyed his time as an orthopaedic house surgeon working with Charles Gray, but was less enamoured with the statutory medical post at the North Middlesex Hospital. Examinations did not come easily to him, and at one stage he seriously considered entering general practice and joining his good friend, Michael Hudson, who had taken this pathway. They met each year on a Thursday of a Lord's test match, and continued this tradition as a token of their friendship over the years. Deciding on surgery as a career, he first did a casualty post at the Royal Free Hospital, before going to the Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Here he fell under the spell of Donald Barlow and was greatly influenced by him. Harry followed Barlow to Southend, one of the many hospital appointments of this talented surgeon in the days when travel by car was much easier. His chief also built up a reputation as a chest surgeon and Harry worked with him at the London Chest Hospital. He also worked under (Sir) Reginald 'Reggie' Murley at the Royal Northern Hospital, 'a member of that dwindling band of men known as "characters": a quality composed of a judicious mixture of intelligence, ability and individuality'. He valued his time as a surgical registrar to George Qvist at the Royal Free Hospital, and admired this superb clinical teacher of undergraduates and postgraduates in the generality of surgery, even if he was a little 'tempestuous and impatient' of character. Qvist expected his assistants to be readily available, capable and tolerant of his demands on them. It was a time when registrars accepted their post was not just a job, but a way of life. Therefore, at the Royal Free there existed a friendly spirit between all those in surgical training, fostered by Harry Naylor in particular. Registrars were encouraged to write many clinical papers, but not engage in the type of research leading to a MS thesis, as Qvist regarded this as a mark of a future academic 'professor of surgery'. Harry was in his element when hospitals celebrated Christmas, at a time when patients were admitted for several days: as a result the wards had a 'family atmosphere'. Many old patients were invited back if they were living alone and, as was the case at the Royal Free Hospital, many 'down and outs' were invited to share the patients' Christmas meals and enjoy the festivities. Staff and families dined off the remnants of the turkeys, carved to perfection by the surgeons on the unit for the 'patients'. All this helped the great spirit of friendship existing in those days. The remnants of the meals were washed down with a plentiful supply of alcohol, now forbidden by most NHS trusts on 'health grounds'. He joined John Hopewell as a senior registrar. Hopewell was a general surgeon and the first urologist to the Royal Free, and the first surgeon in the UK to carry out a renal transplant. Harry Naylor was taught modern urology and, more importantly, how to behave as a consultant in an ethical manner. His chief described Harry as 'enthusiastic and very cheerful' as a colleague. Even at these early stages of his surgical career, he was a great charmer of ladies and could defuse any explosive situation, particularly when the ward sister was laying down the law. As a time-expired senior registrar, he went to Orsett to join Eric Colburn, a general practitioner, but an unexpected vacancy of locum consultant came up, which he occupied until he gained his definitive appointment. Harry Naylor was a member of the Peripheral Vascular Club, initially intended for surgeons working in peripheral hospitals, and also freeman of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. He had many hobbies, including fishing, which was almost an obsession, shooting, gardening, and good food and wine in the company of friends. He enjoyed watching cricket, particularly test matches, and was a follower of Burnley Athletic Football Club. Another abiding passion was jazz music, on which he was very knowledgeable and certainly enthusiastic. After 30 years of marriage to Ann, they separated and divorced in 1994. He then married Sue née Jennings, and this brought further happiness and support to Harry. His later years were blighted by debilitating ill-health. But he did not allow this to dampen his spirits and he maintained an active life with immense support from Sue. In the end he was wheelchair-bound and in need of permanent oxygen. He died on 15 January 2010. At his funeral service a jazz band played and later a memorial service was held in Basildon on 15 April. He was survived by his second wife Sue and by Ann Naylor.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001562
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Sellors, Sir Thomas Holmes (1902 - 1987)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date 2006-06-01 2012-03-09
JPEG Image
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E000000-E000999/E000200-E000299
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/372424372424
Occupation Cardiothoracic surgeon
Details Thomas Holmes Sellors, the only son of Dr Thomas Blanchard Sellors, a general practitioner and of Anne Oliver Sellors (née McSparron) was born on 7 April 1902, at Wandsworth. A few years later his father moved his practice to Southend-on-Sea and Tom, as he was always known, went to Alleyn Court Preparatory School at Westcliff-on-Sea, before moving to Loretto School, Musselburgh, and then to Oriel College, Oxford. He secured a university entrance scholarship to the Middlesex Hospital and qualified there in 1926. Following resident medical and surgical appointments at the Middlesex and Brompton Hospitals, he was surgical registrar to Gordon Taylor at the Middlesex. During this period he was the first recipient of the G.H. Hunt Travelling Scholarship, awarded by Oxford University in 1928, and was able to spend some time at surgical centres in Scandinavia. After a thorough grounding in general surgery, during which period he later recorded his indebtedness to Sir Gordon Gordon-Taylor, R.V. Hudson, Tudor Edwards and the physicians R.A. Young and Evan Bedford, he decided to specialise in chest surgery. He was an excellent technician and, with the contemporary rapid developments in anaesthesia, he was keen to devote himself to the specialty. He surprised some of his seniors when his book *Surgery of the thorax* was published in 1933. In the early 1930's few of the London teaching hospitals, or the large general hospitals, offered opportunity for the newly emerging surgical specialties. But opportunity came with his appointment to the staff of the London Chest Hospital in 1934, followed by further appointments to the Royal Waterloo Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford. He also secured appointments at various London County Council hospitals and sanatoria, and started chest units at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and at Leicester Royal Infirmary which entailed much travelling by car and an immense workload. Such was the peripatetic and scattered character of thoracic practice in a period when tuberculosis was principal preoccupation of a chest surgeon. On the outbreak of the second world war he was appointed adviser in thoracic surgery to the North West Metropolitan Region, based on Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, where he worked most happily and productively until his retirement. Shorttly after the war, in 1947, he was appointed thoracic surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital where he developed close and cordial relationships with the cardiologists Evan Bedford and Walter Somerville, to whose skilful assessment of cardiac problems he always paid warm tribute. From this time onwards, both at Middlesex Hospital and Harefield, cardiac surgery progressively displaced most of his earlier pulmonary and oesophageal work. As a result of this, in 1957, he was appointed as consultant surgeon to the National Heart Hospital when cardiac surgery became a rather belated funcition of that institution. In the second half of his surgical life he set up open heart surgery units at these last three hospitals. But he never allowed cardiac surgery at the Middlesex to threaten the work of other departments, such was his concern for the interests of his colleagues. A number of the other hospitals to which he had previously been attached provided opportunity for several of his trainees to establish thoracic and cardiac surgical centres. Ever courteous in the operation room, he was superb craftsman and a master of sharp dissection. He was never known to raise his voice, nor did he ever blame anyone else when things went wrong. A clumsy assistant might received his favourite admonition "Juggins!". But he had a devoted and enthusiastic band of trainees, some of whom became internationally renowned and several of whom predeceased him. To all of them he was affectionately known as "Uncle Tom." He was up at daybreak, or earlier, often visiting a ward before the residents or day staff were around. His gentlemanly style and good manners ensured excellent rapport with nursing staff and gave immense confidence to his patients. He worked with deceptive rapidity and economy of effort, seldom wasting time with idle chatter, so much so that an astute trainee - anxious to secure his shrewd advice under rather pressing conditions - once hopped into his car and took an unplanned trip from Harefield to London with him. Despite being in the forefront of cardiac surgery in this country, he showed a healthy conservatism in avoiding frankly experimental procedures. Nevertheless, having set out to do a Blalock operation, which proved quite impossible due to dense lung adhesions in a man with bilateral pulmonary tubercule, and noting the tightness of the valvular obstruction, he calmly borrowed a tenotomy knife from a nearly orthopaedic theartre and did the first direct operation for the relief of pulmonary stenosis. It is worthy of report that, on hearing of this operation, one of his rivals then emulated him and got into print first. He learnt his hypothermic technique from Henry Swann and then closed some five hundred atrial septal defects, in which procedure his results were unrivalled at that time. He next unashamedly learnt his cardiopulmonary by-pass technique from John Kirklin, by which time his rapid technique became relatively less essential to a successful outcome. He had retired before coronary artery by-pass was established and later frankly admitted that he had believed the successful anastomosis of such small vessels to be impracticable. From the inception of the National Health Service in 1948 he was active in the medico-political field. This was almost an inadvertent development, surprising in a man who was so deeply involved in his surgical work, but largely due to his public spiritedness and readiness to serve his colleagues. He was chairman of the North West Metropolitan Consultants' and Specialists' Committee for some years; was a member of the Central Consultants' Committee form its inception and its chairman for five years. He was elected to Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1957. The following year he became Chairman of the Joint Consultants' Committee in succession to Lord Brain, a demanding task which he undertook for eleven years, having received the accolade of Knight Bachelor in 1963. A year after demitting office as chairman of JCC, and having been Vice-President for one year, he was elected President of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1969 to 1972. Earlier at the College he had been Tudor Edwards and Gordon-Taylor lecturer, and was then Bradshaw lecturer in 1968 and Hunterian Orator in 1973. He also served as President of the British Medical Association and was awarded its Gold Medal. After demitting office at the Royal College of Surgeons he was elected a College Patron and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Dental Surgery. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hunterian Collection and ultimately its Chairman. Despite his intensely busy surgical life he travelled widely abroad, lecturing and demonstrating in Europe, India, Russia and South America. He also visited the United States, Canada, Japan and South Africa, becoming an honorary fellow of the surgical colleges of South Africa and America, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was elected to the FRCP London and to honorary membership of the European Cardiological Society, the Academy of Medicine in Rome and the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium. Whilst giving a number of eponymous lectures in the course of his travels he received honorary degrees at Groningen, Liverpool and Southampton, as well as the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française, and became an officer of the Order of Carlos Finlay, Cuba. He had a strongly international outlook and did much for the generality of surgery and in particular for the International Society of Surgery, of which he was President from 1977 to 1979. Well after retirement from hospital and private practice he supported many good causes. He was Chairman of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund for five years; Chairman of the National Heart Foundation; Chairman and later President of the Medical Council on Alcoholism. Apart from the publication of his textbook at an early age, he wrote many papers and edited a number of other cardiothoracic works. He had a capacity for graceful living and was a keen gardener and a proficient painter in water colours. Few were privy to the personal tragedies he suffered during a long life of service. In 1928, aged 26, he had married Brenda Lyell, who died of appendicitis a few weeks later. In 1932 he married Elizabeth Cheshire by whom he had a son and a daughter; but, when both children were in their 'teens their mother developed a stroke and hypertension. She died in 1953 when Tom was at one of the most demanding periods of his life. He married his secretary, Marie Hobson, in 1955, a union which was to last thirty years. Ironically, as the non-smoking wife of a thoracic surgeon, she developed lung cancer and died nearly two years before him. When he died on 13 September 1987 he was survived by his daughter, Susan, and by his son, Patrick, who is a fellow of the College and Surgeon-Oculist to Her Majesty the Queen. A service of thanksgiving was held at St Clement Danes Church, on 2 December, 1987 when the address was given by Sir Reginald Murley, PPRCS.
Resource Identifier RCS: E000237
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset

First Title value, for Searching Rothnie, Norman George (1927 - 2011)

2025-10-30T06:23:22Z

by N Alan Green
Publication Date 2011-11-16 2013-11-25
Unknown
Asset Path Root/Lives of the Fellows/E001000-E001999/E001500-E001599
URL for Files https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/search/asset/373777373777
Occupation General surgeon
Details Norman Rothnie was a greatly respected consultant general surgeon with a major interest in peripheral vascular and also in thyroid surgery. He worked for over 30 years at the Royal Berkshire Hospital and made many contributions in peripheral vascular surgery. A tall man who 'never looked down' on anyone, he was known by his friends for his infectious good humour, and by his patients for his level-headed advice, laced with transparent kindness and sympathy. Imperturbable in the operating theatre, he never spared himself in the pursuit of excellence, and his large hands belied a gentle operative surgical technique, which he passed on to his many trainees. He was born on 21 January 1927, in Watford, Hertfordshire, the eldest child of Andrew Abercromby Rothnie, a bank manager, and his wife Melissa Furey née McConnach. The family was completed by two younger sisters. After a brief foray south of the border, the family left Watford and returned to Pitlochry, where Andrew Rothnie became the local bank manager. It was here that Norman received his early education. A permanent move to England occurred when Norman's father was appointed manager of the Regent Street branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The family took up residence in Moor Park in northwest London, and Norman continued his secondary education at Watford Grammar School. Even at this early stage his natural leadership qualities were apparent, and he was elected head boy in his final year. Early thespian tendencies were also evident at school, where he acted in school plays, usually in lead roles, as physically he stood head and shoulders above his peers. In 1945 he entered St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, which had been evacuated to Cambridge during the war. Undergraduate students coming straight from school formed a quarter of the intake, the remainder had served in the Armed Forces during the Second World War or had worked in industries allied to the war effort. For the first two terms students shared the facilities of the Cambridge University pre-clinical medical school. Some students were housed in Queens', and enjoyed the collegiate atmosphere, although wartime rationing of food was a problem. At Easter 1946, all Bart's preclinical students left Cambridge and returned to Charterhouse Square, West Smithfield, London, to continue their studies. Most of the medical school buildings had survived the war-time bomb damage inflicted on the City, except for the refectory, which was reduced to one storey. Norman was able to live with his parents in Moor Park and was often to be seen in the dissecting room on a Saturday morning, wearing his kilt, perhaps before or after a game of golf. He was a relaxed but diligent student, who obtained the Kirkes scholarship in medicine and the coveted Brackenbury prize in surgery before sitting the qualifying examinations. With this surgical prize he was guaranteed to obtain the house surgeon post on the professorial surgical unit in 1950 with Sir James Paterson Ross. John Kinmonth was the assistant director at the time and later Norman was to gain a lecturer post at St Thomas' under Kinmonth's guidance. The Christmas shows produced by students and staff were an essential part of the festivities at Bart's. Norman was in his element as the shows toured each ward, and he both wrote and acted in comedy sketches, usually incorporating wry comments on consultants of the day. A 'pot pourri' of the best of the shows was staged at the Cripplegate theatre after Christmas, where Norman proved a superb compere, particularly when joined by a colleague of much smaller stature. Norman then proceeded to a senior house surgeon post at Hill End Hospital, in cardiothoracic surgery, with Oswald Tubbs and Ian Hill for a further year. This mental hospital in St Albans had served as a war-time sector hospital for Bart's, and specialties such as orthopaedics, neurosurgery and cardiothoracic surgery remained at Hill End for many years before returning to West Smithfield. Having decided on a surgical career, Norman obtained a post as a demonstrator of anatomy at the London Hospital for a year in 1952, during which time he passed the primary FRCS examination. In February 1953 he began his National Service. He served as a junior specialist in surgery, firstly at the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, London, in association with Westminster Hospital, and then at the Army Chest Centre, Connaught Hospital, Hindhead, Surrey. Some of his earlier publications were produced during this period, including 'The management of serious primary pleural effusion in young adults' (*Tubercle*. 1954 Aug;35[8]:182-7) and 'Lipothymoma; a report of a case and a review of the literature' (*J R Army Med Corps* 1956 Jan;102[1]:39-43). Back in civilian life, he became a junior surgical registrar to the surgical professorial unit at Bart's under Sir James Paterson Ross and with Gerard Taylor. After a year, during which he passed the final FRCS, it was time to get more 'cutting' experience in a peripheral hospital. He spent two years in general surgery with Reginald S Murley at St Albans, combining this with some orthopaedic experience under A F Rushforth. In October 1957 he joined the surgical unit at St Thomas' Hospital under John Kinmonth as a lecturer in surgery, a post he held for two years. He benefitted from working with Frank B Cockett, who had an established expertise in the management of varicose veins, and George Kent Harrison, a Canadian by birth, who joined Norman R Barrett as St Thomas' Hospital was taking its first steps in cardiac surgery. His research work blossomed, and included the investigation of 'deficiencies of haemostasis following total body perfusion', the subject of his MS thesis, and animal experimental work on the use of patch grafts in the heart. He published and delivered many papers on both of these subjects, and gave an Arris and Gale lecture at the RCS in 1961 on 'Abnormal bleeding after total body perfusion' (*Ann R Coll Surg Engl*. 1961 Aug;29:102-12). In October 1960, Norman moved back to St Bartholomew's Hospital as a lecturer in surgery with senior registrar status under Gerard Taylor and assistant director of the surgical unit, B N Catchpole. He was able to gain wider experience by working on other general units at Bart's. This period was highly productive, and he wrote many papers, mainly on vascular surgery, including some work on autologous vein grafts and the revascularisation process. In 1963 he undertook a four-month sabbatical visit to the main surgical centres in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, to learn about their clinical and research work on gastroenterology, thyroid and peripheral vascular surgery. He was appointed as a consultant general surgeon to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in July 1965. Within a year he became a RCS tutor, with responsibility for postgraduate educational and training programmes. For the following eight years, up until 1982 he was the Oxford regional adviser to the RCS. Other commitments during this period were to local and regional ethics committees, but the ultimate local accolade came when he was elected president of the Reading Pathological Society. At a national level, Norman played a major role on the education advisory committee of the Association of Surgeons, and as a member and then chairman of the specialist advisory committee on general surgery. He was particularly interested in manpower issues and was on the manpower advisory panel of the RCS. He was an active member of the Grey Turner Club from 1973 and was the driving force behind the foundation of the Peripheral Vascular Club in 1968, and became its secretary and then president. It was felt that there was little opportunity in the UK for general surgeons with an interest in peripheral vascular surgery and working outside the teaching centres to discuss informally the problems of their specialty. Membership was limited to 15-20 members, and although they joined the new Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, composed of those from teaching centres, they maintained an independent forum, as a travelling club, which met in the spring. The format of the meetings was to have formal papers on a Friday afternoon, followed by an evening dinner, and on Saturday morning there was a 'confessional', a sympathetic, but nevertheless keenly critical, forum for discussion and debate. Norman was very much a family man. He married Margaret (Peggy) V Deane on 30 July 1952 and they had four sons: Iain and Neil, and the twins, Bruce and Stuart. Only Neil followed his father's footsteps. He trained at St Bartholomew's and became a general surgeon. At the family home in Sonning, Berkshire, and the holiday villa in Spain, visitors were always very welcome. On social occasions, and when entertaining staff and colleagues at home, Norman always wore a kilt. In hospital, he always expected high standards and his juniors had to be smart on duty. On one occasion, after a reprimand for substandard attire, all three members of his firm appeared in morning dress the next day. This was one of the few occasions when their chief was lost for words! Sadly Peggy died of metastatic breast cancer on 1 November 1985. After a year Norman married his secretary of many years standing, Mary Ellen Dredge, much to the delight of his family. They were able to enjoy some 25 years together and in his autumn years of retirement their move to Budleigh Salterton in Devon proved a great success. Norman was able to indulge in his passion for golf and together Norman and Mary enjoyed travel. Even in retirement, Norman was always one to stand up and lead. Wherever he went, he was the life and soul of the party, whether taking charge as the self-appointed head of a Saga tour group, or arranging for *The Royal Scotsman* train to make an unscheduled stop at his home town of Pitlochry simply to get fresh supplies of his favourite whisky from a nearby distillery. Norman died of a ruptured thoracic aneurysm outside his home in Budleigh Salterton on 29 January 2011 at the age of 84. He was survived by Mary, his four sons and their families. His grandson Alexander qualified as a doctor from Imperial College just a few months after his death.
Resource Identifier RCS: E001594
Collection Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format Obituary
Format Asset