My friend Jean Dubberley, who has died aged 89 after suffering a stroke, was a doctor in family planning and community medicine. She was devoted to looking after the health of women and children, and played a vital role in the campaign for national screening for cervical cancer.
In 1963, the Northern Echo, then edited by Harold Evans, was campaigning for women to be screened for cervical cancer. Jean was the anonymous author of a piece published in July of that year headed “How I had a womb cancer test: a woman doctor describes how she had the one-minute cervical smear test”.
She wrote about her own experience to reassure other women that the test was relatively simple and painless. The reason she became such a great advocate for it was that “one woman out of every 200 will be spared a possible extremely painful, and even fatal, cancer, and those of us who have seen women so afflicted know just how terrible this cancer can be”.
Evans took Jean with him to lobby MPs on the subject and told me that it was “courageous of her” to support the campaign “given all the inhibitions on doctors venturing into public life”. Jean considered this a proud part of her legacy and was touched when Evans wrote a letter to the Guardian in 2018 acknowledging her role.
Born in Crumpsall, Manchester, to Ronald Roberts-Marshall, an electrician, and Winifred (nee Hampson), a librarian for the AV Roe aircraft company, Jean grew up with two older brothers and was educated at Crumpsall high school for girls. She then studied medicine at Manchester University, where she met her husband, Ralph Dubberley, whom she married in 1954. Graduating the following year, the couple briefly lived in Germany during Ralph’s national service, then settled in Darlington, County Durham, where they both practised as doctors.
Jean balanced her work with raising three children, Andrew, Nick and Claire. She loved to escape to the family’s holiday home in the Yorkshire Dales.
In 1969 she was appointed as a magistrate in Darlington, where she sat on the adult bench and later became deputy chair of the juvenile panel. Jean helped found the charity Family Help in 1976, which provided a refuge for women fleeing domestic abuse in Darlington. She was politically active, being a member of the Anti-Nazi League, Anti-Apartheid Movement and Amnesty International.
Jean and Ralph moved to Herefordshire in 1986. She continued to support community clinics, and sat on the Hereford and Worcester board of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. In retirement, she volunteered as a befriender, helping an elderly lady to combat loneliness. She also did brilliant work with adult literacy. A real community person, she was always interested in the lives of others and eager to help wherever she could.
Jean is survived by Ralph, their children and four grandchildren.
