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British physician and public health activist (1929–2018) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dame Beulah Rosemary Bewley DBE (née Knox; 2 September 1929 – 20 January 2018)[1] was a British public health physician and past president of the Medical Women's Federation on the General Medical Council.
Beulah Bewley | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | Beulah Rosemary Knox 2 September 1929 County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, UK |
| Died | 20 January 2018 (aged 88) London, England, UK |
| Education | Alexandra College Trinity College Dublin |
| Occupation | public health physician |
| Known for | President of the Medical Women's Federation on the General Medical Council |
| Spouse |
Thomas Bewley (m. 1955) |
| Children | 5, including Susan |
Bewley was born Beulah Rosemary Knox[2] on 2 September 1929 in a Protestant family in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the second of three daughters of Ina Eagleson Knox (née Charles), who came from a wealthy family, and John Benjamin Knox, who worked for the Ulster Bank.[3] Aged 14 she became a boarder at Dublin's Alexandra College.[3]
Aged five, Bewley decided that she wanted to become a doctor,[2] and went on to qualify as a doctor at Trinity College Dublin in 1953.[3] In 1955, she married Thomas Bewley and moved to England where she worked in paediatrics for fifteen years, before undertaking a MSc degree in social medicine at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,[4] where she was the only woman in the class.[4][5]
After training in public health, she worked at several institutions in London including the Academic Department of Community Medicine at King's College Hospital Medical School, the Department of Community Medicine, St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.[6]
In 1982, she served on the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom. She served on the Royal Society of Medicine's section on Epidemiology and Public Health.[6]
Her medical school, Trinity College, celebrated its tercentenary in 2011,[7] and Bewley served on the tercentenary board from 2007 to 2012.[2]
In Bewley's fourth year at Trinity College Dublin, she met a young psychiatrist, Thomas Bewley, from a Quaker family that owned Bewley's coffee shops.[3] They married in 1955, and had five children.[15] Their second daughter, born with Down Syndrome, defied early expectations regarding her health, and lived until the age of 44.[15]
She was greatly upset when her daughter Susan came out as a lesbian, but the rift was healed. Susan went on to become a medical professor, and to write her mother's memoirs.[16]
Dame Beulah Bewley died from cardiovascular disease and dementia on 20 January 2018 at the age of 88 in London.[17] [15] She was survived by four children and her husband.[3]
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