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English general practitioner and broadcaster From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wendy Elsa Greengross (29 April 1925 – 10 October 2012) was a British general practitioner and broadcaster. The Independent called her "a pioneering counsellor and one of the leading figures in fighting for equal rights for the disabled and the elderly".[1]
Wendy Greengross | |
|---|---|
| |
| Born | 29 April 1925 Golders Green, London, UK |
| Died | 10 October 2012 (aged 87) |
| Spouse | Alex Kates |
| Children | 5 |
Wendy Elsa Greengross was born on 29 April 1925, at 10 St Mary's Road, Golders Green, London, the daughter of Morris Philip Greengross, born Moisze Fiszel Gringross (1892–1970), a manufacturing jeweller, and his wife, Miriam Greengross, née Abrahamson (1899/1900–1968).[2]
Her father was mayor of Holborn from 1960 to 1961, and her brother Sir Alan Greengross (born 1929) was a leading Conservative member of the Greater London Council.[2]
Greengross was educated at South Hampstead High School from 1936 until she was evacuated to Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, followed by University College Hospital, where she qualified as a doctor in 1949, and in 1952 won a Fulbright Scholarship to the Chicago Lying-in Hospital.[2]
Together with her husband, Greengross ran a large general practice in Tottenham, London.[1] Opened in 1955, it was one of the UK's first group practices.[3] She particularly promoted family planning, and they were the country's first GP practice to have a dedicated marriage guidance.[1] Greengross worked as a GP for 35 years.[1]
Greengross received counsellor training from the Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate), and would go on to become its Chief Medical Adviser.[1] In the late 1960s, Greengross started teaching pastoral care and counselling at Leo Baeck College.[2]
Greengross went into broadcasting in the early 1970s, joining the BBC Radio 4 counselling programme If You Think You've Got Problems, which ran for nearly eight years.[4] She had her own television show on BBC1 in 1973, Let's Talk it Over.[4]
From 1972 to 1976, Greengross was an agony aunt for The Sun, but "felt the letters passed to her were more about titillation than education".[4]
Greengross wrote Jewish and Homosexual, published in 1980, by the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, which "led the way towards equality within the British Reform and Liberal movements".[2] Greengross published several sex education books, particularly focused on more marginalised groups, such as Sex and the Handicapped Child in 1980.[2]
Greengross was a founding member and chair of the organisation Sexual Problems of Disabled People (SPOD), and a founder of the Residential Care Consortium.[2]
In 1951, she married a surgeon, Alex Kates, and they had five children.[1]
Greengross had two daughters, Hilary and Polly, and three sons Nick, Richard, and Trevor (d. 1997).
Greengross lived for many years in Hampstead Garden Suburb, before a retirement flat in Regent's Park Road, where she died on 10 October 2012 of pneumonia.[2] She was buried at Cheshunt's Jewish Cemetery.[2]
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