As a young woman, my grandmother Jill Poulton, who has died aged 94, was expected to come out as a debutante and marry. This did not appeal to her at all, and after a near-miss in a bomb attack in 1940, she resolved to grasp the opportunities afforded to women by the upheaval of the second world war. Years later, she told me: “God had saved me for something and I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”
She was born in London, the younger daughter of George Hunt, a consultant physician at Guy’s hospital, and his wife, Rosie (nee Strauss), who had studied at the London School of Economics before her marriage. Jill and her older sister, Margery, were educated by a governess.
Jill gained a place to study medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, where her efforts also included driving an ambulance and polishing the college furniture. In 1943 she was turned down for a place on the clinical course at Guy’s hospital. The dean said: “Women medical students – over my dead body!” Instead she became a wartime medical student at the West London hospital and found herself doubling as a porter, fire watcher and x-ray technician.
After her marriage in 1949 to Christopher Poulton, a psychologist, Jill worked in Cambridge as a part-time GP while raising four children.
Then, with support from Addenbrooke’s hospital and funding from the Medical Research Council, she carried out research into fatigue in junior hospital doctors, and also did a long-term study of a number of patients with spina bifida that began in 1970. Following the group from birth into adulthood enabled her to discover which patients were likely to survive, walk, function independently and have the best life chances. This led to Jill being awarded a Cambridge MD at the age of 90, in 2012.
She loved walking, and into her 80s enjoyed singing in a choir in Cambridge.
Christopher died in 2000. Jill is survived by their children, Pippa, Christopher, Joanna and Alison, 11 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
