| Description | Interview with Harold Bowie recorded on 29 June 2002 by Jennifer Carter.
Transcript of Interview :
JC So you came up to the University, Dr. Bowie, in 1937. Was that an automatic choice? Were you an Aberdeen man?
HB No. We as a family, moved down from Shetland, to live in Osborne Place, in Aberdeen, mainly for the purpose of education, because most of us were getting on to university age. My mother was then a widow and she had 8 of us to look after.
JC Eight children!
HB Eight children, and she had lost two before that. So it was quite a bit of a struggle in a way.
JC I think it must have been an enormous struggle.
HB And so we tended to go easy on spending things and that sort of thing. We didn't smoke and we didn't drink, you know, and we didn't have time for it either.
JC How was your father lost? Was he lost at sea, or something like that?
HB No, he had leukaemia, and he was a GP in Shetland, and he had been a graduate in 1893.
JC Of Aberdeen?
HB Yes, of Aberdeen.
JC So when he died, your mother felt it was right to move down to Aberdeen with the eight children?
HB That's right. Which was very good move. While we had never seen a metropolis like Aberdeen before, we had never seen tramcars or railways, or anything of that sort. Not even trees!
JC Of course Shetland is pretty well tree-less isn't it?
HB Pretty well tree-less, yes.
JC How old were you when the move was made?
HB Well I was just 12.
JC And what was the age range of your brothers and sisters?
HB Well my oldest one was 19, 17, 16, 13, myself 12, something like that, and my two sisters were a bit younger. Well there were three younger than me. My youngest sister was only 2.
JC How did your mother support herself and her brood?
HB Well she had just what my father had left. I don't think there was any other grants in those days.
JC And no other income coming into the house?
HB No. I don't think so.
JC Gosh, she must have been a very good manager!
HB Yes, a very good manager! Anyhow I went to the Grammar School, but I got bored stiff with the Grammar, because they didn't exercise your mind at all. It was a poor place in my opinion and when I came up to the 5th year I couldn't stand the thought of going on to a 6th year. So I made sure that .. well they had put me in for Lower Latin, Lower Maths, Lower French and things like that, which was no use for getting through. I think the Head Master did this purposely because he knew, or should have known, that I could do a lot better than that. So I took the University examination…
JC The Bursary Competition?
HB The competition yes, and I got everything I wanted, Higher English, Higher French, Higher Maths, Higher Science and Lower Latin, because we hadn't been trained higher than lower Latin. I was the only one in my class to leave in the 5th year. But I found University teaching vastly different from school. One thing in particular was the absence of basic teaching of Organic Chemistry at school. Whereas students who had been in some of the English Higher schools, coming up here into medicine, had studied Organic. So they miles ahead of us in that respect, and I would have thoroughly enjoyed learning something a bit more than the Grammar School gave us. Very basic stuff.
JC So you were accepted into the Medical course aged 16, is that right?
HB It would have been 17, I think.
JC So you would have been just 17?
HB Yes, I think it was.
JC And they accepted you into the Medical course?
HB Yes.
JC So you were year 1, Medicine, doing Medicine alongside people who had had a better education than yourself?
HB Yes, we did. There were no recommended text books, in Aberdeen at that time, except for 2 or 3. For example Gray's "Anatomy".
JC Yes, every medical students' bible.
HB And Professor Hogben's book which he had just written, a book on zoology, which I think we all had to get. It was no use, because when it came to the first Zoology exam, 50% failed. In spite of his book! There was another one, Professor David Campbell, who was the Materia-Medica. He had written a book and I think most of us had got that, but again it was pretty ancient, pretty old.
JC It sounds like your first year teaching was not very good. Is that right?
HB No, not all that good. You had to work had to catch up to the level you should have been, in spite of all your Highers and that sort of thing. Now, we used to take profuse notes and I believe that Aberdeen was famous for the fact that the students took notes all the time. They took notes of everything.
JC Did the lecturers speak at dictation speed?
HB Well, not all together. Professor Hogben used to say that he often got some of his jokes as answers to the questions at the exams. Well, at that time there were no Halls of Residence. Every student who didn't belong to Aberdeen lived in digs. Now the landladies were very concerned about their charges, and they kept and eye on them.
JC You were not in digs yourself were you?
HB We were at home in Osbourne Place.
JC And you remained as a home-based student throughout your career?
HB That's right. The landladies made sure that the students were home in bed by 10.00pm at night, at least, and they looked up the published results of exams in the Evening Express, and woe-be-tide any of their charges if they hadn't passed! So they kept a good watch on the students and it was a very good thing in a way. A bus was laid on to take us from Marischal College, up to the Botany Department in Old Aberdeen, and back again, down the Spital.
JC Now how long did that go on? Was that just in first year?
HB That would have been the first two years I think. Once a week.
JC So apart from that all your teaching was based at Marischal College?
HB All the teaching was otherwise at Marischal.
JC And when did you move up to the hospital?
HB We moved up to the hospital in 1939.
JC So that would be in your 3rd year.
HB Yes.
JC And that was presumably the first time you ever met patients as well.
HB That's right. The first time we ever saw patients. And we were very lucky in the medical side, because Professor Aitken had just been appointed as Professor. That was his first appointment as Professor in Aberdeen, in January 1939. We didn't get there until after the summer vacation, that would have been September, and he was a very good teacher. A very clear teacher, and I think we were very fortunate to have him, because many of the regular lecturers had been called up or would soon be called up to the army in 1939.
JC And that applied even in the Medical Faculties?
HB Oh, yes. So we had quite a few substitutes that they brought in from elsewhere. We had a Frenchman who taught us skin diseases for example, but anyhow we went on during the war. We paid a lot of attention to the fighting that was going on in the Phony War time Didn't know what to make of it, you know. And then Anthony Eden came out with this Local Defence Volunteer idea. So I was one of those that joined the LVD's in Aberdeen.
JC And what did that involve you in doing?
HB It involved us in going to Ashley Road School once a week, I think it was Tuesday evening, or something like that. We would assemble there and attempt to do a little bit of drill and so on. We were issued with out Army uniforms and LDV armbands.
JC So this was really Home Guard rather than Civil Defence, is that right?
HB That's right. But it was when Churchill came in a month or two later that he changed the name.
JC Called it the Home Guard.
HB Oh yes, of course a lot better than the LDV's! So it became the Home Guard. So I was in the 1st Battalion of the Home Guard in Aberdeen.
JC Did that have any implication about your being called up for military service, I mean.
HB No not really.
JC So you were presumably exempt as a student ?
HB The University has it's own organisations. That was the OTC and STC.
JC And you did not join either of them?
HB No. I didn't actually know about it. It wouldn't have mattered. I was lucky. I didn't have to be regimented to the same extent, and it treated me very well, I suppose! Being a Shetlander you like to be a little bit wild! So our teaching from 1939 onwards to 1942 was all at the new Medical School at Foresterhill. The only residential stint that we had was in Mid-wifery, when six of us would live in at a time would live in digs in Cornhill Road.
JC Not in the Medical Hostel at Foresterhill? That didn't exist then?
HB No, Cornhill Road, leading up to the hospital, but not part of the hospital itself.
JC The Hostel must have come later.
HB It was within easy running distance of the Maternity Department. Not long before that, when the old Maternity Hospital was in Castle Street, I believe that was up to 1935, when the new one was opened, the Howdy digs, written about by Eric Linklater in one of his books, was in King Street, because he was a Medical student at one time.
JC And you were obviously interested in him because of his own Shetland background.
HB Well he was an Orcadian! They are different you know! Well before I qualified, some of the class lodged in the first custom built student residence. Near to the Maternity Hospital in Foresterhill.
JC Yes, That was the one I thought you had meant you were in, but I see, that came later.
HB That was built after I had done my stint. During the war years we were very concerned, first of all about the Phony War and then Dunkirk. I can remember that at the time of Dunkirk we all stood out there preparing for a pass exam, and we said "to hell with this. Why are we here. We should be there defending our country or doing something". But we knew that it was impossible. There was nothing else we could have done about it. So we had to face to a hopeless situation. Now in the LDV and the Home Guard, we had our parades, first at Ashley Road School, then we had field training, out in the fields round about on Sunday afternoons, where you would crawl on your belly, and you would obey orders to do what you were supposed to do. Carrying a rifle. A Point 303 rifles were issued to us. But we had no ammunition . They were Rosch rifles, which had been stored in Canada since the first world war.
JC Gosh - so they were pretty old-fashioned?
HB And they were believed to be pretty lethal, as they used to back-fire sometimes! Then we had small-bore rifle shooting, at the small-bore rifle club in Union Grove. You put 3 pence in the kitty when you went in, and whoever was the winner would collect the kitty. Every Saturday I used to get about 4 shillings!
JC Very good. You were a good shot in other words?
HB Well, they had an inter-company competition, you see, and I fired off my five shots, but there was only one hole.
JC Pretty good.
HB Well they didn't believe that I put all the bullets through the same hole. So I had to fire again. So I said , well I will scatter them round the middle of the target. The bane item was guard-duty.
JC What were you guarding?
HB We had to go on guard one night per week, guarding first of all the gas-works, down at the beach there, and then the electricity works. Now, when we were at the gas-works in the first place we had no weapons, but stacked in the entrance to the place, were pikes. Steel rods with bayonets fastened to them, so presumably it the Germans landed on the beach we had to go down and poke them back into the sea!
JC Pretty primitive!
HB That was before we graduated up to rifles. At the electric works, it was very much the same. You would go out on shifts. A three- hour shift or something, you would go out and parade up and down and guard the electric- works and then come back and go into your bunk and sleep off the rest of the night. Well that suited me fine, because I got 4/6d., which was the main reason I never missed one. Even although it was Hogmany! They reckoned that I was very reliable in that respect, and they didn't mind too much if I missed out some of the field exercises.
JC So all of this must have impinged quite a lot on your studies. I mean it sounds like quite a lot of hours you were doing?
HB Oh yes, indeed. It did in a way. Now the very first meetings we had at Ashley Road School were conducted by two of the University Professors. Professor Lockhart and Professor Young, but neither of them had a commanding voice. Nothing like a sergeant-major, and none of the usual expletives you know, an that sort of thing. So they were only there for two or three occasions and then we had a proper sergeant to keep us right. During the summer vac most of us would find jobs to do in the national interest. For example putting up poles in flat pieces of ground all over the north-east of Scotland, you know, to prevent aeroplanes from landing on them. Quite a lot of chaps did that and a lot of them did farm work.
JC Was the National Defence paid or was it voluntary?
HB I think it would be partially paid any how. I was different you see, I was always a bit of an outsider in a way. I got a job with Tawse, the contractors in Rubislaw Quarries. They were digging air-raid shelters. So I volunteered for this you see and found I got paid for it, and they thought that being a bit of a strip of a lad, you know, I might want to do something like time-keeping or something like that. I said "Oh no, no. Labouring". Got the goings of the labouring class. So we had to dig pretty deep holes and pretty big ones. I can't remember if they were 10 x 30 feet, or there-around, and then you would build a concrete shelter. Prefabricated concrete shelter down on the ground lever. Concrete roof and a couple of feet of soil on top. Well we were doing that one day, at Berryden Road, and it was a day something like this morning, where you had overcast sky, but there weren't clouds low down. Below the overcast the air was quite clear, and we had stopped for lunch and we lay up on a grassy slope, you know, having our sandwiches, and we heard the noise of a German bomber. Well we knew the sound of a German bomber compared with a British one.
JC Yes, you could recognise the engine?
HB Oh we knew. Yes, and he came down below the clouds and started coming over towards King's College. We saw the bomb-doors open, and we saw a stick of six bombs coming out , one after the other. We didn't know exactly where it was, somewhere near King's. I believe, later, that it landed at the playing field just in front of King's. Now just then a couple of Spitfires swept down out of the cloud cover, swept around it and fired shells into the German bomber. I think it was a Heinkel but it didn't stop it immediately. It sailed on rather slowly and dropped another set of six bombs over Hall Russell's.
JC The ship yard.
HB And really shattered it. Then it turned over to the right and landed on top of the newly built ice rink, which was built down near the west side of Anderson Drive, just above the Bridge of Dee. Well we saw the terrific flash and smoke coming from that direction.
JC Where the plane came down?
HB That's where the plane came down. It was very interesting to see this actually happen.
JC Indeed. Like watching it on a film.
HB Yes. The Neptune Bar in particular was hit. I remember going down afterwards to see what things looked like, and you could see that the granite cassies on the road were scored with marks of shrapnel.
JC Goodness!
HB Because, you see, in Aberdeen if they dropped a bomb, it didn't go down. It scattered out sideways. I found that very interesting to know. Later on, during the war, because I was pretty near to some shells in France, which sank into the agricultural soil, and they went up in an angle, and you were fairly safe, unless you were right by it. I had a nearly direct hit. So that was one thing I learned from that.
JC Was there much bombing in Aberdeen? I mean you have described one air-raid.
HB No, there was quite a bit of bombing. If they hit a house, just one house went. Everything didn't go. It wasn't flattened like the things you saw down in England.
JC Did you see any other raid yourself? Or only the results?
HB Mostly the results, but we had saw some occasionally. You would see a bomber in the search-lights being caught up and the ak-ak going for them. There was one time there was one of the Shetland boats. It would have been .. I can't remember if was the St.Clair or not. It was coming down from Shetland to Aberdeen, it was attacked by a German aircraft, but if it was a Shetland gunner, they were pretty good marksmen, you know. They got him. He straddled the ship when it came into Aberdeen. Well this was all over the papers, you know, and the Germans sent out a submarine and sank it next time it came down.
JC Oh, dear!
HB Now the only time after we went to Foresterhill, the only time we came back to Marischal College was to the Mitchell Hall for professional exams and that kind of thing. I think the Graduation ceremony in 1942 was in Elphinstone Hall. That was the only time we came to King's at all.
JC Apart from coming up to Old Aberdeen for Botany.
HB That was a very civilised occasion, you know. No carry on at all. Very few gowns. Nobody could afford it for one thing.
JC Very interesting. So you graduated in your ordinary suits, did you?
HB Oh yes. Most. Very few gowns, and there were very few photographs around at that time. I don't think I had a photograph at all. After qualification I was fortunate to gain residency at the Woodend Hospital for 6 months before being called up to the army in 1943. Now that was very useful. Some of our chaps were called up straight away, after graduation.
JC But you got a bit of experience before you were called up.
HB I was interviewed by the army - Medical Brigadier in Edinburgh Castle, just at the time I was called up, and that was Willie Anderson, the surgeon from Aberdeen. He was Brigadier.
JC So it was he who arranged for you to have the 6 months in Woodend was it?
HB No. You had to apply for that, and you had to lucky enough to get it, you see. Well we had some training after I joined up, somewhere in Leeds and Aldershot military training, and then I was posted as regimental medical-officer to the 1st Battalion The Highland Light Infantry. Then after about 9 months they transferred me to the Brigade Field Ambulance in the same brigade. So I was in that brigade right through to the end and after we had got through France and Belgium and were attacking Germany, they posted me to the Ox & Bucks. Light Infantry, the 1st Battalion, and I found that very, very useful, but a bit hazardous at times, you know, but a very useful transfer, and I enjoyed it very much. We finished up in Spandau, before Hess was there.
JC So you went over in the Normandy invasion ?
HB Went over in the Normandy invasion, yes. And we saw the bombing of Caen. Which I think that about 500 bombers came over and blew the place up, you know. We were situated about 12 miles away. The bombing would have been about 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning and at mid-day the dust came over those 12 miles and surrounded us, covered us with dust. We had a whole lot of civilian casualties came in.
JC And then after the war did you stay on in the army or what?
HB No. After the war we were given three months supernumerary positions. Paid for by the Government, and I had a supernumerary appointment in Aberdeen Infirmary for 3 months, in Surgery, and then after that you had to look out for a job. Now I wasn't very sure what line of business I was going to go into, but I was rather interested in orthopaedics, and so I applied for this job in Birmingham, and I got it. So I started there at the end of 1946 and I just stayed around that area ever since.
JC So you have made your whole career around Birmingham?
HB Birmingham and the Black Country. That's Stourbridge and Dudley, in between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, which was very poorly staffed at the time. There wasn't a single full-time consultant there when I joined.
JC Good heavens !
HB But now there is all over a hundred, and it is very much developed since then.
JC Good. So you never envisaged that working in such a huge metropolis when you trained in Aberdeen, I imagine?
HB Oh, no. No. But there was quite a difference between the patients you saw in Birmingham, and the ones you saw out in the Black Country, you know.
JC And what about the contrast with your Aberdeen patients at Woodend ?
HB Oh I think the Aberdeen ones were absolutely genuine. They were very much like the Black Country people were. They are genuine people. They came along with something really positive, and sometimes ridiculously neglected, you know. Many times I saw that. I saw many, many things and patients that were just left to rot and to die away at home. No effort made at all to ..
JC Why was that? Were people afraid of incurring expense?
JC Now we are on the second side of the tape! Well that was a very interesting point you were making about people's reluctance to come to medical treatment, before the war.
HB Yes. Well for one thing, there was a distrust I think of hospitals in a way, because they used to be considered to be the last resort, and as so many people would go there to die. No matter what was wrong with them. Quite a lot of that sort of distrust.
JC So people putting off the need for a hospital ..
HB But in a way, what could you do in those days. We had so many things. In surgery it was alright, as Napoleon said, the physicians were no use, but the surgeons were useful, and this still applied in the 1920's and the early 30's.
JC That's right, I suppose it wasn't till, when, the advent of the Sulphonamide drugs, that..
HB Yes, the Sulphonamides were the first break-through.
JC Which was about in the, late 30's early 40's?
HB About 1935. The puerperal sepsis for example. You had puerperal sepsis wards in the infectious diseases hospitals. I was never in one, but I was told that as soon as you went in the door of one you could smell the sepsis, and there was large percentage of deaths from that until sulphonamides came in, it might have been 1936, and within a short time puerperal sepsis wards disappeared. And of course when I started in - the physicians, for example, they could do nothing about renal failures. I mean, you would see the people there just getting swollen with oedema and so on and they would just lie, on a very reduced diet, but they would lie for months and months, and then gradually die. You had no treatment for leukaemia. Young children would come in, growing whiter and whiter, until eventually they just died.
JC You knew what was wrong, but you couldn't do anything about it.
HB You couldn't do a thing for it, and quite a number of other cancer type of things were treated as being absolutely hopeless. I remember at Woodend, for example, people coming in with some of the puerperal cancers, with no hope at all.
JC It must have been a very discouraging profession in some ways then, when you entered it?
HB Well, I think on the surgeon side it wasn't so bad, because you could do something for so many. I mean like taking out an appendix or something like that, or stitching up a stomach.
JC Mending a broken leg or whatever.
HB All that sort of thing. Amputating legs.
JC What drew yourself, I didn't ask you. What drew yourself to medicine. Was it because your father had been a GP, or did you have some other reasons for entering?
HB No. I think it might have been probably because he had been a GP, and it is just in the family. It was just one of the things that was just done. My oldest brother went in for medicine as well.
JC That was the one who was 19 when you came to Aberdeen.
HB That's right, and we have just celebrated his 90th last month in Edinburgh!
JC Splendid! So thinking again about your time as a medical student, you have explained to me that you came from quite a difficult background in terms of money, so you had a Bursary?
HB No.
JC You had a Carnegie Grant?
HB No.
JC You paid everything yourself did you?
HB Yes, apparently there was enough in the kitty for my mother to put us through.
JC Did you have much spending money, or only what you earned yourself?
HB No, oh no. I didn't even have sixpence a week.
JC And did you pay the money you earned in your labouring jobs and so on, did you pay that to your mother, or did you keep that for yourself?
HB No, I didn't keep it entirely. I kept most of it. I would equip myself with a raincoat, and buy a few things for the household, but we had no regular arrangement. But I was rich with 4/6d, when you could go down to Strathdee's Café in Union Street and you could get a pie and peas for 9d.
JC Pretty good! So on those sort of details of every day life, you lived at home, did you walk to Marischal College?
HB Oh, yes. Always walk there. And walk to Foresterhill as well.
JC And what about your midday meal. Did you go home for lunch or did you buy a pie and peas somewhere?
HB No, we didn't buy anything. I would walk home for lunch.
JC You would go home. So you would have breakfast at home, lunch at home and then back for high-tea?
HB Yes, that is right.
JC Did that rather limit what you did outside studies? I mean, did you have any social life outside your studying?
HB Not social life in that way, but we were extremely interested in nature. We had never seen trees. You would go up to Hazlehead just to have a look at the trees! You would go up there, if you got 1½d. for the tram, or maybe 2d., and maybe go up to Hazlehead, you could spent ages up there.
JC Just wandering round looking at everything.
HB Just wandering round. And we would go out on bikes to Countesswells Road, to a place where there were masses and masses of wild raspberries, and we would pick them. And one of my brothers was very keen on making jam. He would make about three-quarters of a cwt. of jam in the summer months..
JC Goodness! So that kept you going all the year.
HB That kept us going all the year. And another favourite spot was Scotstown Moor. North of Aberdeen, north of the Don.
JC Went there by bike or public transport?
HB We would get a tram from Holburn to the Bridge of Don, and then we would walk out from there. We went there because you could see things like frogs, and toads, and newts, of which there were none in Shetland.
JC Did this kind of interest in nature and in animals and trees and so forth, did this persist when you were an undergraduate or are we talking about your schoolboy interests.
HB No, no. It persisted as an undergraduate as well. I mean if we had anything, or if we had lectures on anything to do with wild life. I remember it was an extremely stormy weekend, that we were going to have a talk the next day on zoology, and I went down to Cove, to Nigg Bay, and I found some Limpets, which I knocked off this thing, so I was able to take my contribution. The lecturer said "where did you get those"? and I said "The Bay of Nigg", and he said he was there and couldn't find any! I didn't like to tell him that I was a Shetlander, you know!
JC Interesting. What sort of relationship did you have with the people who taught you. Was it very formal or what?
HB Yes, it was formal. Very little informal.
JC Did you every go to the house of a member of staff?
HB No. I remember that it was, Principal Fyfe from Canada.
JC Yes from Canada, a clergyman.
HB Yes. Well he came down at the on goings at Aberdeen. After he came for example, they used to tar and feather the first-year medical students.
JC And he put a stop to that, did he?
HB Oh, yes. They would tar and feather them, tie them together, and walk them round the streets, past, especially the Girl's High School, and all that sort of thing, and back again. He put a stop to that, which I thought was a bit soft in a way.
JC You approved of it, did you?
HB Well it had stopped before I was ever here. We also used to have Rectorial fights.
JC Do you remember any of those?
HB Oh, yes. I took part in one.
JC Which contest was that? Who was fighting whom?
HB It was Admiral Evans, Evans of the Broke. But I can't remember who the other one was.
JC He was the victor anyway. Did you fight for him?
HB Oh, yes. I voted for him because he was a national hero. They would nail these huge flags up on the doors of the Physics and Chemistry and we would all gather around and would throw our pease-meal, little bags of pease-meal, and things like that at each other, to raise the temper, and then we would start the fighting. All the professors were up on the thing, watching, you see.
JC The object was to capture the other standard, was it?
HB Yes, you had to pull down the standard. We didn't win the standard that time, but we won the election. There was one occasion, during that same contest, there was a dance in the union, it would have been, and it went on all right, you know, until someone from the opposition let off a rather big stink bomb, which emptied the hall. We thought that wasn't fair, you know. Some of the Chemistry chaps, I suppose!
JC Did you go often to student dances?
HB No. Couldn't afford it.
JC Couldn't afford it. How much did they cost?
HB I am not sure, but we would have had to buy drinks and things.
JC I see. So that would have been too expensive?
HB Yes.
JC Were you very conscious as a student then of there being differences between wealthy and poor students, or was that not something.
HB We didn't pay the slightest attention. I think there was two or three in out class who had a car.
JC Well I wondered if any had.
HB And a few had bicycles, but the rest of us just on Shank's Mare you know.
JC And you just got on with it. And it wasn't a sort of issue between you at all.
HB No.
JC Did you make friends with anyone from backgrounds very different from your own?
HB Yes. Lots of friends.
JB So it wasn't a bar to friendship?
HB Oh no. We still have some of those friends, you know, to this day.
JC That's good.
HB I found the Aberdonians extremely pleasant people to get on with.
JC Did you go into their homes?
HB Yes. I used to go in from time to time.
JC What about women students. Were there any medical students who were women in your time?
HB I think almost 50%.
JC As high as that?
HB It was somewhere like that. 40 or 50.
JC That's very interesting. What was the attitude of the men towards them. Were they accepted as equals or were they seen as being ..
HB Never gave it a thought.
JC Never gave it a thought.
HB There were some inter-marriages, later on, after they had qualified, and we kept in touch with our various reunions. I think the first reunion was about 1960, probably 1962 I think. Then at intervals ever since. It is finished now.
JC You have told me how much impact the war made on you, yourself, and how you followed the national news and so on, but thinking back to the few pre-war years, you had as a student, were you politically interested at all? Were you interested in the rise of Natzism, or Munich crisis, or what?
HB Oh, yes, we were, you know, and of course you were listening to the wireless and we used to tune in especially to hear Hitler, ranting away. Although we didn't know what he was saying.
JC You literally turned on the wireless to hear this guy.
HB Oh. yes. It was usually, if I remember rightly, it was usually on a Sunday, and I would pay an awful lot of attention to Churchill. At home we took the Express, that was Beaverbrook's Express at that time, and he was very much in favour with Churchill at that time. Churchill seemed to appeal to us, at least our family, at that time. Although he wasn't universally in favour, you know.
JC What about other students, did you discuss politics with them. Or was you political interest very much family centred.
HB I never bothered to talk of politics or religion when we were students. We didn't have time to bother with it.
JC Were you a religious family?
HB Well in a way, yes, I think. Probably were a church-going family, but we weren't fanatical.
JC Did you ever go to the University Chapel when you were a student?
HB No. I have never been to it. Except just to have a look around.
JC So is there anything else that you think we haven't covered about your student days that you would like to put on the record? I think I have raised most of the points I was interested in. The cost of living, how you got on from day to day, relations with staff, all those sort of things. Is there anything you would have liked to say? Oh, we haven't talked at all about sport. Did you take any part in sports?
HB Not really. I wasn't much of a field sports person, because we didn't have football in Shetland, for example. And when you get up to the age of 12 or 13, well you can't be bothered with it, you know. We did a certain amount of cricket, but I could never understand cricket! I couldn't get into it, but the sport's I would have liked were boxing and rowing.
JC And none of them were practised here?
HB That's right, none of them. I thought we should have a team race down on the Dee, you know.
JC Which they do now, by the way.
HB Well I though they should have.
JC There is an annual boat race between the University and Robert Gordons.
HB The only contest that I took part in once was a tug-of-war, against Agriculture students, and we won! Medicals! We beat them! We were supposed to get a walking stick as a prize, but as it was during the war, they didn't have sticks, so I never got my prize!
JC You never got your stick! What about the Aberdeen Student Charities Campaign, was that active in your day?
HB Yes, very active.
JC Were you involved?
HB Oh, yes. Took a lot of interest in that.
JC What sort of thing did you do? Go around shaking a can?
HB Yes. Well went around collecting money in collecting boxes and that sort of thing and we would dress up or something.
JC And of course, just about the beginning of the war was when they opened Foresterhill, and there was a huge money-raising campaign, which led up to that, wasn't there?
HB Yes. Well I think that it was probably about 1935 or something, I think.
JC I had forgotten the exact date, but it wasn't long before the war. Anything else that we have not covered, do you think?
HB Oh well, there are many things. We used to do lot of reading at home, we had a good big library, and we did a lot of reading.
JC Well with 8 of you, it was worth buying the book, rather than just borrowing it from a library!
HB Oh, yes. We would buy what was going, but we used the Library a lot.
JC That would be the City Library?
HB Yes, the City Library.
JC Did you use the University Library to study in or not?
HB No. I can't remember that they had one, you know. They probably did down at Marischal, but I am not sure.
JC That's interesting. So as a Medic your study was mainly out of text books.
HB Yes, mainly out of text books, and of course from these profuse notes that you made.
JC Were the notes passed round, from student to student?
HB No, they didn't. You just did your own.
JC Nobody offered to sell you their notes from the year before?
HB No. I never heard of that ! It maybe did happen but not in my experience!
JC I'll tell you one of the things that has struck me in our conversation, and that is how very strongly you feel yourself to be a Shetlander.
HB Yes.
JC Was there a kind of Shetland network in Aberdeen. I mean did Shetland families keep in touch with each other?
HB Oh, yes. They had the Caithness, Orkney & Shetland Society, which still exists.
JC And was this a city society or was it a student society?
HB It was a civic society.
JC And your family belonged to that.
HB No, we never went to it!
JC You never went! Although you have this very strong consciousness of being a Shetlander! Did you know other Shetland families?
HB Yes, lots of them.
JC And how did you keep in touch with them? Visiting at Christmastime and that sort of thing?
HC Well after we had left the family home the place was more or less empty, but my mother would take in students from Shetland, masses of them.
JC So any time you came home it was full of Shetland students.
HB Yes. Year after year, she would take in students from Shetland.
JC As a landlady?
HB As a landlady, that's right, and she coped with them very well, and lots of them are extremely grateful for how she attended to them.
JC But I have been very struck, as I say, by the number of times you have spoken of your self as a Shetlander.
HC Well a lot of it is just a joke in way, you know!
JC In a way. But was your father born there. I mean ..
HB Yes, he was.
JC He was a native Shetlander, if I may put it like that. He wasn't just someone who studied medicine, and went to practice in Shetland.
HB That's right.
JC And you were never tempted to make a career in Shetland?
HB No. You couldn't do any Orthopaedics up there.
JC Everybody was brought down to Foresterhill.
HB Yes, there wouldn't have been the numbers. You see down in Dudley, at Stourbridge, I had a catchment area for 300,000 people, in the black country.
JC I was thinking of being a GP, but that wasn't your interest.
HB No, not particularly. I had nothing against them. I think it is probably the most important part of medicine, is being a GP. But you have to be a good one.
JC And you had this particular interest in Orthopaedics. How did that start. I mean, who inspired you towards that?
HB Well, during this 3 months super-numerary duties we had after the war, they did a certain amount of fractures and things like that in the general surgical ward. The registrar hadn't a clue, he didn't know how to put on a Thomas's splint and get all the cords going up in the right direction, with the right angle and all that sort of thing. I thought, damn it all, I could do better than that myself! That was one of the reasons that I thought well I'll go for Orthopaedics. And of course the other thing was, I went to Birmingham, not out of any particular choice, but I asked around the consultants in Aberdeen and they said that if you are going to Birmingham, you go to the Woodlands Orthopaedic hospital there. It was called the Royal Cripples Hospital, and in the adverts in the P & J, I looked up the whole of them, I would have never dreamt of going to the Royal Cripples Hospital, because I didn't know it was orthopaedic, you see! I mean, what are cripples anyhow? Could be anything. Oh you go to the Royal Cripples Hospital, it was organised by Norton Dunne from Aberdeen, way back before the 1st World War. He was appointed as the first pure orthopaedic surgeon in Birmingham, and he wasn't very popular because he chucked out all the general surgeons who weren't expert, who weren't prepared to toe the line and do proper, what he would regard as proper orthopaedic work. We now have a club in his name, called the Norton Dunne Club. It has been going for the last 40 years.
JC So that is another forgotten Aberdeen hero!
HB Oh, yes. Norton had died before I got there. As soon as I got there who did I find but Mr. Hendry, from the Broch! Qualified a Gold-medalist in Aberdeen, you know, just after the first war. He had been in the first war, and he was one of the senior surgeons there, and old Bob Stewart F.Wilson Stewart, an Aberdonian, and about the same age as Norton Dunne had been, he was there. So it was well stocked with Aberdonians.
JC They get everywhere, don't they!
HB And the first thing I said to them, was "For God's sake ", because when I applied for it, I was the only applicant, and I said "For god's sake, change the name of it! I mean call it the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, instead of the Royal Cripples Hospital." Which they did, very promptly, and I think it has helped them with getting the applicants, because people have some idea what the thing was.
JC Lovely.
HB And I have taken up journalism lately, in the last, well coming up to the 40th year, which is next year. I thought I would start off with the millennium, and I will write out a small journal, and circulate it. It was very popular, because they had kept no proceedings for 40 years, and I got the founder members to subscribe an essay and when we put this all together, it was amazingly good. It was information that people had no idea of at all. I said that I would carry this on. I tried to get the Business Committee to agree to contribute to it, but they won't. They don't think it is popular enough yet. I said I would do it next year, and I will do it another year or two after that, as long as I am able. So I went up to the internet lecture this morning to see if I could pick up something, because it is difficult to run a journal simply by writing by hand or typing on a typewriter and sending things out by postage. We have got 350 members in this club, which I thought was quite a big club for the Midlands, you know. It is time that they had some of their proceedings recorded. So I am just hoping I can get into the internet, so that all I will have to do is to press a switch and the whole lot of them see it!
JC And they all get it for free! Well you have been very generous with your time. Thank you very much indeed. That has been a fascinating talk. Thank you.
HB You are very welcome.
End of Interview |