| Description | Interview with Dr Douglas Stewart recorded on 5 September 1986 by Elizabeth Olson.
Transcript of Interview :
O Why did you come to Aberdeen University Dr Stewart?
S Because I was advised by my headmaster at Strichen school, who was Mr Benjamin Skinner who was well thought of and whose advice was just taken.
O Had you come from a professional family?
S No. I come from a farming family and the first person that I know of who went to university in my family.
O Mr Skinner would have been a good person to listen to?
S Yes. He was the only source of knowledge of this kind that we had.
O You said that you went up to the Arts Faculty and you did an honours degree in Maths and Physics?
S Yes.
O You said that you enjoyed the course but you also enjoyed sport?
S I enjoyed the sport more than the course in a sense. Though I was first in the class at the end of the second year both in Maths and Physics I only got third class honours, which was a disappointment. I wished then to go into the Royal Air Force where I could have used my so called specialised knowledge to do various odd things but my folk were very much against this. At about this time an aunt of mine died and there was suddenly a little spare money in the family, so our friend Mr Skinner was approached to see how much it would take to put me through medicine because my mother had noticed that one time I had said you know the one thing that I would really like to study is how the body works, not how to make people better, but how the body works. So she said would you still like to do this and I said oh yes I would like to do that and I would like to get back to the university. I missed my football you see. The headmaster came to the conclusion that it would take £1,000 to put me through medicine and he said for your pocket money you'll have to work to earn it. So this was embarked upon.
O Do you remember any of your teachers in the Medical Faculty?
S Yes very much. Stanley Davidson, Professor of Medicine; Lairmonth, Professor of Surgery; Dugald Baird, the Professor of Midwifery.
O Do you remember them for eccentricity or for excellence?
S For excellence and some eccentricity.
O Like?
S Stanley Davidson liked to hear himself speak and had some tremendously fine turns of phrase and was a kind of dramatic speaker in lectures. I don't know if lectures are as important now as they were then. Lairmonth was a tremendous disciplinarian and as such had to be listened to. He was a character. He was also the gentleman who operated on the Duke of York for his circulation or something. He was a splendid teacher and right now I can remember some of the stuff that he taught me which has stood me in good stead. Dugald Baird was a very compelling teacher, put out a great deal of mental energy in considering cases, what to do with them and what not to do with them. Impressed me greatly with the difficulties of his subject, even if he was a professor who could have got away with anything it seemed to me. He also was a gentleman who was forgetful. He hardly ever had a handkerchief, somebody had to produce some pieces of gauze for his handkerchief and he had to apologise for it. He really ran a very good department. We had other chiefs in surgery and medicine too who were very good teachers, impressive men, Fred Smith, Willie Anderson, Sydney Davidson, Norman Roly , all sort of pulled you along with them.
O Were they friendly to the students personally or was it just their job? Did they take you to their homes or meet you socially or was it merely professional?
S The only one who did this was Lairmonth who was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and he entertained students who were coming into the third year medicine, that's the clinical medicine, at his home.
O Where was that?
S In Queens Road. I remember as I became a more senior student being asked by him to go and help his wife and himself and with others to entertain these people. He saw it as a duty.
O Did the students appreciate that?
S I think they did, yes. It gave them a chance to feel that they had become part of something.
O Were you at the Medical School at the time that they moved up to Foresterhill.
S Yes.
O Do you remember the removal?
S Yes.
O How was it done?
S It was done piecemeal. We had some clinics in the old hospital and then the ward that we were in became ready up the road and we went up there, but it was gradual.
O Was everybody very pleased with the change?
S They were delighted. It was a horrid noisy place the old place with trains going underneath the building and very cramped conditions and open outside as well. It gave you a feeling of alienism the openness.
O Where did you live when you were in University?
S In digs. First of all in Skene Terrace.
O Was that as an arts student?
S Yes and I started off medicine there as well.
O How did you find the digs?
S By answering an advert.
O In the paper?
S In the newspaper, yes.
O Were you the only lodger?
S No. A friend of mine who had been a friend at school came and shared the room with me. We were then the only lodgers.
O What did it cost? Do you remember that?
S Twenty five shillings a week all in.
O Heat as well?
S Heat as well.
O Washing?
S You mean had my laundry done?
O Yes.
S No. I sent it home! But once a week strangely enough we got a shilling back so that we could go and have a bath at Isaac Benzies.
O In the shop?
S Yes. There was a row of maybe ten baths there and this was a popular pursuit.
O That was kind of your landlady.
S Yes. She didn't have a bathroom.
O It cost a shilling to have a bath?
S Yes. For a bath and clean towels.
O Were you well fed or was it poor?
S Very well fed.
O Your family didn't bring any food in, anything in kind?
S No, the odd chocolate biscuit was sent in with the laundry.
O Did you have pocket money?
S Yes. I would have had five shillings a week pocket money.
O What did you have to pay for out of that? Lunch?
S No. We came home for lunch and we walked everywhere, never spent a penny on transport.
O What did you do for your social life?
S My social life started very poor. The odd visit to the pictures and the theatre but that would have been all. I found that life in arts was very lonely.
O Why?
S Coming from the country you came into classes that were mostly populated by people from the town who had already made all their friendships.
O And were perhaps living at home?
S And were living at home. It was very difficult to get to know any of them. This was much changed when I started medicine.
O Why?
S Because I was older and because I began to be more interested in the running of things like I became secretary of the football club and so on.
O Did you have anything else you were secretary of? Were you involved in the SRC?
S Not in the SRC. I was involved in the OTC and became sergeant major.
O Did that take a lot of time?
S Only for short periods in the summer. I eventually became president of the Athletic Association.
O Football was still you main sport?
S Yes.
O Had you other sports?
S Yes. I tried my hand at putting the shot and at tennis, not very well.
O But you enjoyed that sort of life?
S Yes.
O Did it take you to other universities?
S Yes. To St Andrews, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
O Did you have hospitality from the students there? Where did you live when went away?
S Yes. There were field days so called in which all our winter teams went down and competed with the winter teams of Edinburgh and Glasgow and we were put up at hotels.
O At whose expense, the university?
S At the home university's expense and these were very enjoyable affairs. Then reciprocity we did the same thing when they came back.
O Did you find that you had enough pocket money to keep you going in all this?
S Once I started in medicine I was able to tutor in Maths and Nat Phil and the going rate then was five shillings an hour.
O How many hours did you need to teach to keep yourself comfortable?
S It depended on the demand. I would have had four or five pupils sitting their Maths and Physics which was compulsory at that stage for the university in a year.
O So that would have helped you through?
S Yes.
O What did you do in the vacations?
S Worked on an uncle's farm.
O Did you get paid for that?
S This is a question I've often asked myself. As far as I can remember I didn't get paid but they'd have paid my mother I think. My father by this time had been lost in the first world war so I was dependent on my mother.
O Did you have much idea of the coming war? You graduated in 1939, there was the phoney war before that.
S Yes. I took an active part in helping to recruit for the territorial army.
O Did you find that students were politically conscious or were they trying to put it out of their minds, the younger ones?
S I don't think I was politically conscious myself but it was obvious there was going to be a war on and we had to prepare for that and it was obvious too that one didn't want Nazism here.
O Was that current view of students?
S Yes.
O What about the other extreme, were any of them wanting a communist sort of approach to life?
S One of my best friends was a communist but he wasn't in a position to force it down people's throats very much. There was a chap called Patsy Gallagher who was a local communist chap who studied communism, but no, I don't think that he had much of an innings with the students.
O It wasn't making much impact?
S No, I don't think so.
O Were the students terrified at the idea of the war coming or resigned to it?
S Resigned to it I think.
O Was it difficult to find employment when you graduated?
S No. I remember the drill. It was that one made up one's mind what jobs you would like to do and on the day after the finals results came out you went to interview the heads of the departments where you wanted to work and I got into that right away.
O What did you do?
S Surgery in ward ten with Fred Smith, and I was going to do skins and casualty under John Anderson for the second six months. Of course that never came off, after three months I was away.
O Were there many women students in your class?
S No. Probably about a fifth or less in our class was women.
O Was that because they didn't choose to enter medicine or because it was hard for women to get in?
S I don't know that.
O Twenty years before your time the women kept to themselves, they didn't seem to mix with the men socially. Was that the case in you time?
S No.
O Did you have a union that you all shared?
S Yes, eventually but not until our last year. There were women's and men's unions separate.
O Where were the held?
S The women's union was out at Kings and the men's union was down at Marischal College.
O Did they build the union on its present site in your time or was that after?
S Yes in 1938.
O And that was for both sexes?
S Yes.
O Was that welcomed by the students?
S Yes. There was a women's union place at Skene Terrace where a few were resident and there was the odd hop on a Saturday night there.
O Were hops part of the students way of life at that time?
S Yes.
O For students or for any young people in Aberdeen?
S Mostly for students. Once the bigger place was opened then other people came in. They weren't terribly welcome.
O What was the student attitude to authority in your day? Did you accept that the staff were free to lecture as they wished or did you voice your criticisms of them in any way or rag them if they didn't live up to your expectations?
S There were a few that we would have had a go at but very few.
O What would have a go mean? Stamp your feet or something like that?
S Yes or throw things at them when their back was turned.
O At the blackboard. But that would have been just the ones that you felt were …?
S But this was very rare. Mostly we thought the sun shone out of their eyes really
O Would you have expected a teacher to make a friend of you?
S No. That was a different group - they were on a different layer.
O Did you feel well prepared for your life when you graduated the second time, for your professional career?
S No. I knew I had an awful lot to learn, a tremendous lot to learn. I was still finding that when I was retired, of course.
O Medicine's like that isn't it?
S Yes. But I was very well aware of this.
O And you felt that you were well grounded.
S Yes.
O Was there anything in particular you would have liked that you didn't get? Advice or …
S I think no to that question. The relationship that I had and most of us had with the teachers and the professors and the heads of departments and so on was very open.
O Which sounds very satisfactory. Was there anything that you wanted to say to the record that I haven't touched on?
S The thing looking back that strikes me more than anything else was my isolation as a young arts student. I felt really very alone then. I admit that for the first two years kept the nose to the grindstone a good deal but there was nothing else for me to do.
O What let you into the football scene?
S The fact that I was beginning to be chosen for the first team.
O And that would have opened doors for you?
S Yes.
O But you enjoyed your university time?
S Yes, tremendously. I met my wife there too.
O What did she do?
S She did arts and she was one of the ones that I tutored.
O So that was a pleasant part of your life. Thank you very much Dr Stewart.
END OF INTERVIEW
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