| Administrative History | Alexander Logie Stalker (1920-87), Regius Professor of Pathology, 1972-1982
Alexander (Sandie) Logie Stalker was born in Aberdeen in 1920 and entered the University of Aberdeen as first bursar in 1937. He graduated MB, CH B with first class honours in 1942, and following house officer training in Aberdeen, served with the RAMC in North Africa, Italy and France. From 1947 until his retirement in 1982, he was a member of the University of Aberdeen's Department of Pathology, entering as lecturer, promoted to a personal chair in 1969 and becoming Regius Wilson Professor in 1972. From 1979 - 1982, he was also Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and after retiring maintained his link with the University as External Assessor on the Court. His main research interest was in micro-circulation; as a lecturer he was held in high regard for his careful preparation and lucid presentation. Stalker entered the University’s Pathology Department as a lecturer in 1947, where he quickly earned a reputation as a skilful teacher and an active member of the research community. His main research interest was in microcirculation and he served terms as President of the British Microcirculation Society, 1968-73 and of the European Society for Microcirculation, 1970-71. He died on 22 Jul 1987,
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| Description | Interview with Professor Alexander Logie Stalker in his home, on 1 October 1986 by Mrs Elizabeth Olson.
Transcript of Interview :
This is a continuation of MS 3620/97/1 recorded by Professor Stalker on the 1 October 1986.
O Do you remember any Secretaries of the University?
S Yes. Henry Jackson Butchart.
O He was in post for a long time?
S Yes. He always gave me the impression of being the only administrator in the University.
O Was that his own opinion?
S I think it was too, in some ways. He was an autocratic gentleman.
O Would he have had a big staff at the beginning.
S I wasn't aware of it. I think probably four or five but he dealt with everything. Many, many stories about Butchart. One I remember very particularly was when I came back from the war and applied for a university house and on a Saturday night at about half past ten the phone went and this was Colonel Butchart. I'm giving you the choice of two university houses, one is 19 High Street, that's the house which is now the bank, and the other is Castleton House, that's next to Chanonry Lodge and it's about four stories high with about twenty rooms and I was an assistant on a fairly low salary. He said let me know on Monday morning by 10 o'clock, and this was on Saturday night. I did look at both with my wife and we went to 19 High Street. I remember too when I did acquire a car and was leaving 19 High Street and going up to Foresterhill via Marischal and Colonel Butchart was walking as usual from Old Aberdeen to his office in Marischal and I offered him a lift. I never did it again. I had to put up with five minutes on the folly of using cars when you could perfectly well walk from Old Aberdeen.
O That was most ungracious wasn't it?
S It was a little ungracious but it was Henry Jackson Butchart. He was a wonderful chap with a very considerable bark and no bite at all.
O But efficient presumably as a Secretary?
S I think so for the University of that time. Everything nowadays of course is so complex. How much of the complexity is created I'm not really sure but for a University of that size it was about right. When I graduated there was just one graduation ceremony for all the Faculties. In 1942 it was held in the Elphinstone Hall.
O Was that unusual?
S It was unusual because the Mitchell was supposed to have been unsafe from an air raid point of view.
O Because it was upstairs perhaps?
S I think so. Escape from it was not good so we had it in the Elphinstone Hall and all the graduates could graduate. All their parents and relatives were there and they all fitted in the one ceremony and nobody in absentia, which gives some idea of the changed scale.
O Who was the Chancellor then?
S Lord Meston of Meston Walk.
O Was it conducted in Latin entirely.
S Yes, exactly as it is now.
O And the gowns would be the same?
S Exactly the same, yes.
O Did you have to wear a toga when you were a student?
S One or two medicals did, but very few. Use of the toga out at King's was greater than it is now.
O I noticed that the regulations in 1938 for the medical students was that you were expected to wear a toga but presumably it was just neglected?
S Yes, it wasn't very practical.
O Living in the High Street, did you use the library? Did you find that you were part of the King's community?
S I didn't, I was too busy. I was spending most evenings at Foresterhill and working up there until about eleven, twelve o'clock.
O Because you enjoyed it or because you were very busy?
S Both. One was learning one's trade as a pathologist and then again this volume of hospital workload was going up and up so one had to go back. If one wanted to get any research done you either did it in the evenings or you did it during the day and went back in the evening and caught up with the hospital work, which was really quite hectic.
O Do you remember any of the Sacrists or people like that?
S I don't really. I think Burgess was the Sacrist at Marischal. I don't remember the Sacrist at King's when I was a student. When I went back to live there Mr Morrison was the Sacrist who lived just opposite and then of course the more recent Sacrists one has known.
O When you were at Foresterhill in the fifties there wasn't really much in the way of facilities for students to eat.
S No. They either took something with them or they went down to the Union or the Gates café.
O Can you think of anything in your time at the University that you would have liked to talk about?
S I think one has really been over it fairly fully. I'm sure that one could go on and on for ever, the more one thinks the more things come back but trying to judge their relative importance is not easy. I've become terribly anecdotal.
O Though the anecdotes can be fun and illuminating?
S Thinking about this today, the thing that struck me most was the quality of the clinical teaching, particularly of the Infirmary doctors. I'm thinking of people like William Anderson, surgeon, Sir A G Anderson, Dr Bob Hendry.
O What did he teach?
S Medicine. John Craig before he became a professor, he was in Sick Children's. John Gerrie in the ear, nose and throat. The quality there was exceptionally high.
O Did the students go to the wards in small groups?
S Yes. They were subdivided and there would be about thirty in a group and further subdivided within the ward. There's been a lot of talk about patient's rights and now you have patient's associations to make sure that you have privacy and you're not used for teaching. But all this was by the people who were good, all this was practised away back - these are some students Mrs so and so do you mind if they sit with me or do you mind if two of them come and talk to you and examine you. I never in all my time saw any abuse of a patient's privilege.
O I should think that the doctors who were perhaps a little abrupt were not liked by the students?
S That is so and the students were very quick to pick up someone who was abrasive and just drop him like that. There are nowadays so many oh it's not right that this should happen, you get students and so on and so forth. Rules are made and they shall be observed etc. etc. but they were rules that went without saying.
O You were Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the City of Aberdeen?
S Yes, still am.
O What does that involve you doing?
S Nothing in particular really and I do it very well. You are supposed to represent the Lord Lieutenant if he cannot be present. Deputy Lieutenants must have held a Her Majesty's Commission in one of the armed forces or have been a Lord Lieutenant so that ex-Lord Lieutenants can become Deputies, former Provosts. Most of the Deputy Lieutenants are ex-army, ex-service or ex-territorial persons. Its often facetiously said that this is because they know how to stand to attention.
O Is it fun?
S From time to time one may have to go and present certificates or something on behalf of the Lord Lieutenant. One of the Deputy Lieutenants not terribly long ago had to receive the Queen on arrival in Britannia because the Lord Provost couldn't be there, that sort of thing. You're also supposed to show an interest in and encourage the recruitment of people into Her Majesty's forces. In the event of a war the Deputy Lieutenants would very largely be the group that would deal with matters of recruitment etc in the area. I think that goes for old fashioned wars, not wars that might be happening - I don't think there would be time for all that sort of traditional stuff. It really is titular. We wine and dine the Lord Lieutenant and he wines and dines us alternately. There's one Lord Lieutenant who is the Lord Provost and there are about 12 to 15 deputies.
O But it's a non-political appointment?
S It is totally non-political.
O And your physician to the Queen?
S I was surgeon not physician. I don't think it makes very much difference. You do have work to do there, you attend Court functions and you're a member of the Court for a particular function, like investitures.
O In Aberdeen?
S No, at the Palace. I had two or three trips on duty and you staff the medical centre.
O What is the medical centre?
S In the Palace it's just a room which is the medical room and if somebody should take ill at or after an investiture - it's a big day in their lives and they are anxious - and garden parties. The Holyrood ones seemed big enough at about four or five thousand but the twenty thousand at Buckingham Palace is really pretty hefty and I was quite busy. The chap who did the one before me was a General, Bob Stephen, an Aberdeen graduate, he was Director of Surgery. He died not so long ago and he I think had two or three deaths. When he told me this I though gosh. It's not quite so honorary, you do have work to do.
O May I ask how you got that? Was it through your territorial work?
S Through the territorials. There are about six surgeons and six physicians and two of these I think must be from the territorials. The others are from the regular services, two from the navy, two from the army, two from the air force and one from the territorials.
O That must have been interesting?
S It was really quite interesting. Something quite different, leave Aberdeen, go down, you'd go down into waiting at Millbank which is the headquarter mess of the RAMC and spend the night before there. You sort of whip up in a great big Rolls.
O Was the equipment all provided?
S The equipment was all provided. You foregather with the personage. You go in and come out and you would take a glass of strong Palace gin and tonic then that's your duty over. It was quite interesting.
O You were enjoying your life, there were lots of different facets to it?
S Yes.
O Did you enjoy being Dean of the Medical Faculty? You were there at a very difficult time.
S I was wondering how to bring that in. I think the answer is yes. It sounds terribly arrogant but I felt at the time I knew it had to be done and I was jolly glad that I was in charge of it rather than some people who were there who might have been in charge of it. That sounds horrible but then I've had a lifetime devoted to administrative experience, largely military and hence largely some of the authoritative, I think the occasion demanded a pretty authoritative approach to the cuts and one did just do that. I quite enjoyed it although as you said it was a very difficult time.
O You succeeded Professor Miller?
S McGillivray.
O Times have changed such a lot haven't they? You've seen the pre-war time when things were …
S Pre-war and then the immediate post-war. The inception of the Health Service. A period of University expansion, a period of relative stability and then of course the axe and now the next axe.
O Was it in your time that they established a postgraduate Dean?
S No. That was before I had a personal Chair but I wasn't head of the department. It was in Alistair Currie's time that that happened and Tom Ramsey came.
O Was that just because the workload was getting greater?
S The workload was high and there was the potential for it, there was the money for it and now I think there's neither the potential nor the money, so it's never been filled. There's an executive Dean who couples in with postgraduate work but there isn't a professor of postgraduate medicine. Tom Ramsey wasn't replaced because it was difficult to see exactly what he had to do.
O I suppose the executive one organises the postgraduate training to a certain extent but actually teaching something like that is …
S The actual teaching of it is … I think it was all part of, not necessarily the Robbins expansion, but the university sort of spend money and build this that and the next thing that took place in the sixties and early seventies.
O Did you feel that the Medical School built things that they could have done without?
S They were probably a little bit lavish but when the buildings refurbished recently in 1980/81 we found that it was falling down and it all had to be rebuilt. At that time the UGC approved of the plans to rebuild and approved the detailed plans and now of course they turn round and say it's too big. They must have been equally guilty in 1981 for letting our proposals go forward.
O Perhaps they'd like to see the Health Service paying for some of it?
S I think that is it. I think that argument is currently going on and I think they should because when I was in Grampian Healthboard I was forever on the point of tedium reminding the Board that they were a very good Board but they were as good as the Medical School helped them to be and equally the Medical School was as good as the Board helped it to be because the two are indissoluble. This is a feature of course of Aberdeen medicine.
O Why should Aberdeen more than other places have that?
S I've often wondered this. It's part perhaps of the North East's mentality and great fondness for education and the town has always been interested in the health of the people and the training of doctors. Town and gown have gone together for a long long time.
O And been well served by them, even the dispensary would have been something on which the people did rely.
S I remember as a child at Portlethen, my father as schoolmaster was organising a dramatic performance of something. I think it was Jamie Fleeman the Laird of Udny's Feel and took this company on tour round all the local village halls and they raised something like £500 towards Sir Andrew Lewis's Foresterhill fund. That was something in these days because the whole cost of ARI was £500-£600,000.
O Did you attend the opening?
S No.
O Were you in Aberdeen?
S No. The famous or infamous opening.
O I went to see the video that was on in Foresterhill in the Nurses Home. It was a bit fast as these old movies are and not very clear really but it must have been quite a day for those who set it up.
S It didn't show the King meeting Mrs Simpson I take it?
O Was she there?
S No. He was supposed to open it, Edward, but he sent his brother and he went down to the station and met Mrs Simpson instead.
O So that's why it was the Duke and Duchess of York who opened it. A bit of a slap on the face for the hospital in a way.
S It was a bit although very few of the British public really knew at that stage quite what was going on.
O Do you remember the abdication?
S Yes, vividly.
O Did people care?
S It came as a bit of a shock because he had been built up as someone of great calibre, associated with the troops in the first war and being in the line in the first war and being a caring person. There wasn't the same tittle tattle and press and TV of course there wasn't TV, and radio would never stoop to that and of course nobody knew anything about this. Although the press barons had known all about it and were just waiting to publish it. It wasn't really leaked and it came as quite a surprise and everybody was very baffled. Then when it all came out everybody realised they were better off without him. Certainly the Aberdeen medicine the people, the town, university, they'd all been together and of course the Foresterhill site Matthew Hay's conceptions were almost unbelievable the brilliance of that.
O It was very fortunate wasn't it?
S Yes. Show me anybody with that degree of foresight.
This is a continuation of the tape recorded by Professor Stalker on the 1 October 1986.
O Do you remember any Secretarys of the University?
S Yes. Henry Jackson Butchart.
O He was in post for a long time?
S Yes. He always gave me the impression of being the only administrator in the University.
O Was that his own opinion?
S I think it was too, in some ways. He was an autocratic gentleman.
O Would he have had a big staff at the beginning.
S I wasn't aware of it. I think probably four or five but he dealt with everything. Many, many stories about Butchart. One I remember very particularly was when I came back from the war and applied for a university house and on a Saturday night at about half past ten the phone went and this was Colonel Butchart. I'm giving you the choice of two university houses, one is 19 High Street, that's the house which is now the bank, and the other is Castleton House, that's next to Chanonry Lodge and it's about four stories high with about twenty rooms and I was an assistant on a fairly low salary. He said let me know on Monday morning by 10 o'clock, and this was on Saturday night. I did look at both with my wife and we went to 19 High Street. I remember too when I did acquire a car and was leaving 19 High Street and going up to Foresterhill via Marischal and Colonel Butchart was walking as usual from Old Aberdeen to his office in Marischal and I offered him a lift. I never did it again. I had to put up with five minutes on the folly of using cars when you could perfectly well walk from Old Aberdeen.
O That was most ungracious wasn't it?
S It was a little ungracious but it was Henry Jackson Butchart. He was a wonderful chap with a very considerable bark and no bite at all.
O But efficient presumably as a Secretary?
S I think so for the University of that time. Everything nowadays of course is so complex. How much of the complexity is created I'm not really sure but for a University of that size it was about right. When I graduated there was just one graduation ceremony for all the Faculties. In 1942 it was held in the Elphinstone Hall.
O Was that unusual?
S It was unusual because the Mitchell was supposed to have been unsafe from an air raid point of view.
O Because it was upstairs perhaps?
S I think so. Escape from it was not good so we had it in the Elphinstone Hall and all the graduates could graduate. All their parents and relatives were there and they all fitted in in the one ceremony and nobody in absentia, which gives some idea of the changed scale.
O Who was the Chancellor then?
S Lord Meston of Meston Walk.
O Was it conducted in Latin entirely.
S Yes, exactly as it is now.
O And the gowns would be the same?
S Exactly the same, yes.
O Did you have to wear a toga when you were a student?
S One or two medicals did, but very few. Use of the toga out at King's was greater than it is now.
O I noticed that the regulations in 1938 for the medical students was that you were expected to wear a toga but presumably it was just neglected?
S Yes, it wasn't very practical.
O Living in the High Street, did you use the library? Did you find that you were part of the King's community?
S I didn't, I was too busy. I was spending most evenings at Foresterhill and working up there until about eleven, twelve o'clock.
O Because you enjoyed it or because you were very busy?
S Both. One was learning one's trade as a pathologist and then again this volume of hospital workload was going up and up so one had to go back. If one wanted to get any research done you either did it in the evenings or you did it during the day and went back in the evening and caught up with the hospital work, which was really quite hectic.
O Do you remember any of the Sacrists or people like that?
S I don't really. I think Burgess was the Sacrist at Marischal. I don't remember the Sacrist at King's when I was a student. When I went back to live there Mr Morrison was the Sacrist who lived just opposite and then of course the more recent Sacrists one has known.
O When you were at Foresterhill in the fifties there wasn't really much in the way of facilities for students to eat.
S No. They either took something with them or they went down to the Union or the Gates café.
O Can you think of anything in your time at the University that you would have liked to talk about?
S I think one has really been over it fairly fully. I'm sure that one could go on and on for ever, the more one thinks the more things come back but trying to judge their relative importance is not easy. I've become terribly anecdotal.
O Though the anecdotes can be fun and illuminating?
S Thinking about this today, the thing that struck me most was the quality of the clinical teaching, particularly of the Infirmary doctors. I'm thinking of people like William Anderson, surgeon, Sir A G Anderson, Dr Bob Hendry.
O What did he teach?
S Medicine. John Craig before he became a professor, he was in Sick Children's. John Gerrie in the ear, nose and throat. The quality there was exceptionally high.
O Did the students go to the wards in small groups?
S Yes. They were subdivided and there would be about thirty in a group and further subdivided within the ward. There's been a lot of talk about patient's rights and now you have patient's associations to make sure that you have privacy and you're not used for teaching. But all this was by the people who were good, all this was practised away back - these are some students Mrs so and so do you mind if they sit with me or do you mind if two of them come and talk to you and examine you. I never in all my time saw any abuse of a patient's privilege.
O I should think that the doctors who were perhaps a little abrupt were not liked by the students?
S That is so and the students were very quick to pick up someone who was abrasive and just drop him like that. There are nowadays so many oh it's not right that this should happen, you get students and so on and so forth. Rules are made and they shall be observed etc. etc. but they were rules that went without saying.
O You were Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the City of Aberdeen?
S Yes, still am.
O What does that involve you doing?
S Nothing in particular really and I do it very well. You are supposed to represent the Lord Lieutenant if he cannot be present. Deputy Lieutenants must have held a Her Majesty's Commission in one of the armed forces or have been a Lord Lieutenant so that ex-Lord Lieutenants can become Deputies, former Provosts. Most of the Deputy Lieutenants are ex-army, ex-service or ex-territorial persons. Its often facetiously said that this is because they know how to stand to attention.
O Is it fun?
S From time to time one may have to go and present certificates or something on behalf of the Lord Lieutenant. One of the Deputy Lieutenants not terribly long ago had to receive the Queen on arrival in Britannia because the Lord Provost couldn't be there, that sort of thing. You're also supposed to show an interest in and encourage the recruitment of people into Her Majesty's forces. In the event of a war the Deputy Lieutenants would very largely be the group that would deal with matters of recruitment etc in the area. I think that goes for old fashioned wars, not wars that might be happening - I don't think there would be time for all that sort of traditional stuff. It really is titular. We wine and dine the Lord Lieutenant and he wines and dines us alternately. There's one Lord Lieutenant who is the Lord Provost and there are about 12 to 15 deputies.
O But it's a non-political appointment?
S It is totally non-political.
O And your physician to the Queen?
S I was surgeon not physician. I don't think it makes very much difference. You do have work to do there, you attend Court functions and you're a member of the Court for a particular function, like investitures.
O In Aberdeen?
S No, at the Palace. I had two or three trips on duty and you staff the medical centre.
O What is the medical centre?
S In the Palace it's just a room which is the medical room and if somebody should take ill at or after an investiture - it's a big day in their lives and they are anxious - and garden parties. The Holyrood ones seemed big enough at about four or five thousand but the twenty thousand at Buckingham Palace is really pretty hefty and I was quite busy. The chap who did the one before me was a General, Bob Stephen, an Aberdeen graduate, he was Director of Surgery. He died not so long ago and he I think had two or three deaths. When he told me this I though gosh. It's not quite so honourary, you do have work to do.
O May I ask how you got that? Was it through your territorial work?
S Through the territorials. There are about six surgeons and six physicians and two of these I think must be from the territorials. The others are from the regular services, two from the navy, two from the army, two from the air force and one from the territorials.
O That must have been interesting?
S It was really quite interesting. Something quite different, leave Aberdeen, go down, you'd go down into waiting at Millbank which is the headquarter mess of the RAMC and spend the night before there. You sort of a whip up in a great big Rolls.
O Was the equipment all provided?
S The equipment was all provided. You foregather with the personage. You go in and come out and you would take a glass of strong Palace gin and tonic then that's your duty over. It was quite interesting.
O You were enjoying your life, there were lots of different facets to it?
S Yes.
O Did you enjoy being Dean of the Medical Faculty? You were there at a very difficult time.
S I was wondering how to bring that in. I think the answer is yes. It sounds terribly arrogant but I felt at the time I knew it had to be done and I was jolly glad that I was in charge of it rather than some people who were there who might have been in charge of it. That sounds horrible but then I've had a lifetime devoted to administrative experience, largely military and hence largely some of the authoritative, I think the occasion demanded a pretty authoritative approach to the cuts and one did just do that. I quite enjoyed it although as you said it was a very difficult time.
O You succeeded Professor Miller?
S McGillivray.
O Times have changed such a lot haven't they? You've seen the pre-war time when things were …
S Pre-war and then the immediate post-war. The inception of the Health Service. A period of University expansion, a period of relative stability and then of course the axe and now the next axe.
O Was it in your time that they established a postgraduate Dean?
S No. That was before I had a personal Chair but I wasn't head of the department. It was in Alistair Currie's time that that happened and Tom Ramsey came.
O Was that just because the workload was getting greater?
S The workload was high and there was the potential for it, there was the money for it and now I think there's neither the potential nor the money, so it's never been filled. There's an executive Dean who couples in with postgraduate work but there isn't a professor of postgraduate medicine. Tom Ramsey wasn't replaced because it was difficult to see exactly what he had to do.
O I suppose the executive one organises the postgraduate training to a certain extent but actually teaching something like that is …
S The actual teaching of it is … I think it was all part of, not necessarily the Robbins expansion, but the university sort of spend money and build this that and the next thing that took place in the sixties and early seventies.
O Did you feel that the Medical School built things that they could have done without?
S They were probably a little bit lavish but when the buildings refurbished recently in 1980/81 we found that it was falling down and it all had to be rebuilt. At that time the UGC approved of the plans to rebuild and approved the detailed plans and now of course they turn round and say it's too big. They must have been equally guilty in 1981 for letting our proposals go forward.
O Perhaps they'd like to see the Health Service paying for some of it?
S I think that is it. I think that argument is currently going on and I think they should because when I was in Grampian Healthboard I was forever on the point of tedium reminding the Board that they were a very good Board but they were as good as the Medical School helped them to be and equally the Medical School was as good as the Board helped it to be because the two are indissolvable. This is a feature of course of Aberdeen medicine.
O Why should Aberdeen more than other places have that?
S I've often wondered this. It's part perhaps of the North East's mentality and great fondness for education and the town has always been interested in the health of the people and the training of doctors. Town and gown have gone together for a long long time.
O And been well served by them, even the dispensary would have been something on which the people did rely.
S I remember as a child at Portlethen, my father as schoolmaster was organising a dramatic performance of something. I think it was Jimmy Fleeman the Laird of Udny's Field and took this company on tour round all the local village halls and they raised something like £500 towards Sir Andrew Lewis's Foresterhill fund. That was something in these days because the whole cost of ARI was £500-£600,000.
O Did you attend the opening?
S No.
O Were you in Aberdeen?
S No. The famous or infamous opening.
O I went to see the video that was on in Foresterhill in the Nurses Home. It was a bit fast as these old movies are and not very clear really but it must have been quite a day for those who set it up.
S It didn't show the King meeting Mrs Simpson I take it?
O Was she there?
S No. He was supposed to open it, Edward, but he sent his brother and he went down to the station and met Mrs Simpson instead.
O So that's why it was the Duke and Duchess of York who opened it. A bit of a slap on the face for the hospital in a way.
S It was a bit although very few of the British public really knew at that stage quite what was going on.
O Do you remember the abdication?
S Yes, vividly.
O Did people care?
S It came as a bit of a shock because he had been built up as someone of great calibre, associated with the troops in the first war and being in the line in the first war and being a caring person. There wasn't the same tittle tattle and press and TV of course there wasn't TV, and radio would never stoop to that and of course nobody knew anything about this. Although the press barons had known all about it and were just waiting to publish it. It wasn't really leaked and it came as quite a surprise and everybody was very baffled. Then when it all came out everybody realised they were better off without him. Certainly the Aberdeen medicine the people, the town, university, they'd all been together and of course the Foresterhill site Matthew Hay's conceptions were almost unbelievable the brilliance of that.
O It was very fortunate wasn't it?
S Yes. Show me anybody with that degree of foresight.
END OF INTERVIEW
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