Just twenty minutes after midnight on 1st January 1952 Dr Courtney Willey was summoned to his first call on taking up his position as Physician to Whitehaven Hospital, then situated in Whitehaven Castle.
    He had joined his friend and colleague, Dr John Simpson, with whom he had shared the harrowing experience of four years’ imprisonment in Japanese labour camps, as we reported last month. Until then, Dr Simpson had been the only hospital physician in the area of Whitehaven and Workington to assist the team of general practitioners in running Whitehaven Hospital and Workington Infirmary. After his arrival, Dr Willey assumed responsibility for Whitehaven and district, including Cleator Moor and Egremont, while Dr Simpson served Workington, but in a fruitful relationship, based on close friendship - “almost like twins”, comments Courtney, fondly, they were able to share notes and consult one another whenever they were in doubt. This partnership was entirely free of professional rivalry or jealousy, and was broken only when John left the hospital, on his remarriage, to tour the world. He died of a heart attack in 1980, and on a plaque out side the main entrance to the hospital you may read the simple and heartfelt message, “Keep him in good memory.”
    His sharply focused memories put the present problems of West Cumberland Hospital into an interesting perspective. Until 1958, when John Platt joined the hospital staff and “worked himself into the ground”, they worked without the assistance of any paediatrician. Ear Nose and Throat surgeon, Jack Page, operated in Carlisle, but swore that he would get to Whitehaven within 45 minutes in any emergency, driving at terrifying speeds on roads that would make our present A595 look like a motorway. He also spoke with awe of the work of Mr Arthur Loughran, “a beautiful surgeon.”
    His department moved to the new West Cumberland Hospital in 1960, establishing the only medical ward in the hospital, for all cases not requiring psychiatry or surgery, just a few yards from the helicopter pad. Problems in recruiting staff were even more acute than now, and the hospital was deeply indebted to a succession of brilliant Indian doctors. “Without them we would not have been able to cope at all,” he confesses. He recalls indignantly some of his Indian colleagues being abused in a queue, and telling the muttering locals, “You may not realise that these are two of our hospital doctors and when you have your next heart attack you will be very pleased to see them.”
    Another crucially important wing of the West Cumbrian Hospital service was the Galemire Fever Hospital, ruled by Sister MacIntyre, “who could cope with just about anything.” Dr Willey recalls the last severe epidemic of poliomyelitis, in 1957, when fifty cases were treated. Every one survived under Miss MacIntyre’s care, he declared, though one suffered crippling paralysis. The care which one American girl received so impressed her father that Miss MacIntyre was invited to spend a week in New York with her family.
    With rest and care there was a very good chance of recovery, but he told sadly of a colleague, Jock Campbell, who did not survive. Finding himself feeling stiff and feverish, he chose to row round the Loch in an attempt to shake it off, and the exertions left him at the mercy of the disease.
    His memory, as sharp as ever, is full of the admiration he cherishes for colleagues who worked in the hospitals of West Cumberland, without any of the resources we now take for granted but with incredible devotion and dedication. Keep them in good memory.