CHI Founder

Roy Ridgway

Roy at Nobel Peace Prize presentation

Roy was a radiantly warm-hearted family man, with innumerable friends, connections and stories. His eyes had been opened widely to life’s horrors but he rose above them, taking people with him by the power of his vision and optimism. In his later years he figures, woolly white hair and beard, a Santa Claus twinkling amongst Russian children, a director negotiating with a team of medical consultants, a comedian goose-stepping for the camera in Red Square.

Roy was born in Wallasey, Merseyside. His birth in 1916, the year of Dublin’s Easter Rebellion and the battle of the Somme when over a million men were killed. This for Roy explained why so many born in the war “flung ourselves between the wars into campaign to end all war” as he illustrates in his book, The Unborn Child (1987).

At Wirral’s Roc Ferry School, during the depression, he distinguished himself in European History and English Literature. In 1935 he attended lectures by Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychiatrist, and before the age of twenty was founder editor of the Wirral Magazine.

As a conscientious objector, he began the war in 1939 in prison for three months. On release, still a pacifist though lacking no courage, he opted for the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, training in hospital nursing at Guy’s, Gloucester General and Hackney. At the front, in some of the heaviest fighting, this highly intelligent orderly had to fill the dearth of doctors. Scarcely resting, he saved many lives, his patients’ plight etching his sensitive heart as he acquired his medical grounding. At the costly battle of Monte Cassino, during a moment’s quiet, he perceived a sign of hope in a nightingale’s song.

Roy (centre) with two FAU friends, Italy, 1944

(Roy kept an extensive diary throughout the war providing a unique historical record of the period, now in the Imperial War Museum archives. Occasionally his intimate and revealing commentary is used in publications on the period; for example in Field Marshal Lord Carver’s Book of the War in Italy, providing a powerful exposition and heart rending insight into the workings of a field hospital during intense fighting.)

The war over, in 1945 he became Assistant Editor of Hutchinson’s Encyclopaedia, in 1948, Editor of Art and Industry, and from 1950 worked freelance journalism, and as managing director of the Public Relations firm Fleet Street Promotions. In 1967 he became Editor of New Doctor. In 1973 his Aggression in Youth was published and he became director of the Sparsholt Psychotherapeutic Centre, near Winchester, gaining fresh insights into the effects of prenatal memory an our lives, and so began work on The Unborn Child.

Meanwhile he joined the British Medical Association Secretariat in 1979, and edited the BMA News Review. Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had provided in Roy the strongest reaction with a visionary, practical challenge to nuclear weapons. In 1981 his feature article “Four Minutes to Midnight”, the cover picture of a nuclear bomb and a ticking clock, lead the BMA to set up set up a working party to study the medical effects of nuclear war. This was the year that with others he founded the Medical Campaign against Nuclear Weapons.

He became European Press Director for the International Physicians against Nuclear War (IPPNW). An IPPNW team including Roy prepared two papers describing: the scenario of an H-bomb on Boston Massachusetts; the effects of radiation fall-out on children. Presented to President Gorbachev, the two papers provided the last straw. He repudiated the nuclear deterrent. In 1985 the Nobel Peace Prize was presented in Moscow to five IPPNW representatives, among them Roy. He looked around and said, “We’ve dealt as far as possible with the biggest negative to health. Now what about the positive?” He had become freelance again in 1986, contributing widely to medical journals, and organising medical exchanges on behalf of the USSR Medical Exchange Programme (now Healthprom).

The Unborn Child had been published in 1987, ahead of its time (now updated by Simon House- Karnak Books, 2006). It shows how many of our attributes and difficulties began to develop in the womb. A skilful collation of case histories it makes sense of prenatal and perinatal experiences. Aware also of the vital role of the mother’s nutrition to her child’s lifelong health, Roy had followed up with Preparing for Parenthood (Penguin) and Caring for your Unborn Child (Thorsons) both in 1990.

Roy and wife Dorothea

Roy and Dorothea had married after the war and had three children, Michael and Penny, and in 1955 Tony who suffered cystic fibrosis (CF). With immense love and learning new skills, they had enabled Tony to live happily and creatively to the age of twenty nine in 1984, remarkable for those days.

Dorothea, a teacher and artist, was indispensable to Roy’s work and frequently accompanied him on visits to Russia. While in Moscow in 1993, Dorothea suggested helping two or three children with cystic fibrosis (CF), and it turned out that the main CF centre for Russia was five minutes walk from their hotel! Their approach was warmly welcomed.

Roy’s first move was to contact Southampton General Hospital where Dr. Chris Rolles, Consultant Paediatrician from the CF Unit, eagerly responded to the challenge of heading a medical programme to help children with CF in Russia. This lead to the first major project of Roy’s newly formed charity International Integrated Health Association (now Child Health International).

The charity, working closely with Chris Rolles’ medical team from Southampton and with hospitals in Moscow, London and Odessa, established modern treatment in Russia and Ukraine.

The charity’s work was a stimulus to a wider field of practice than just CF. For instance, the first medical visit showed that no patient records were kept, so that on each visit all personal details had to be given again and comparisons of the patient’s weight and height could not be made. This omission had been partly due to fear of any personal records in Communist years. Such basic improvements affected the treatment of patients in other departments. Projects also broadened, becoming for instance Care of Children with Chronic Illnesses, and their families, which received a grant from the European Commission of £140,000.

Within a few years, not only had the expectation and quality of life of children with CF greatly increased in Moscow, but the updated management of CF was spreading from city to city across Russia, and also from Odessa to other parts of Ukraine. Roy worked to base projects in the community as well as in the medical profession, empowering families and patients to share together in treatment and healthcare, so reversing their previous powerlessness. The parents were able to relate to Roy and Dorothea in a deep way, knowing that they too had nursed their own child with CF.

Such remarkable results are not achieved without drive. Roy loved to exchange and discuss ideas at length, but once held by a vision, he was not lightly gainsaid. He may have had his critics but how many of them achieved so much for so many? Russians, he knew, appreciated his straight talking and tenacity to the helm.

The medical and healthcare figures, and politicians, he met in various countries, held him in high regard, for his wide grasp of the human situation and medical detail fluently expressed - and doubtless for his sense of fun.

Three weeks before his death Roy was delighted to hear that the Presidium of the Albert Schweitzer World Academy of Medicine was to award him the title of Doctor of Philosophy (honoris causa) in the humanities. It would also present him with the Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medal at a ceremony in Warsaw Castle (which in the event was collected by Dorothea and his son Michael).

Roy was a spiritual, not religious man, though he valued the religions’ contributions. Poetry touched him deeply, an unbounded approach to truth. He was close to the Quakers, dearly loving the Friend’s Ambulance Unit; from them his charity has received sustained and generous support. It was surely his meditation as well as his reading that contributed to this man’s stature, great heart and hopefulness.

Roy Ridgway (2nd May 1916 - 5th November 2000)

Taken from Simon House's obituary for the Guardian with some small additions.

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