John Martin
Pioneering doctor who helped improve child cancer services
JOHN MARTIN, who has died aged 85, was one of the first doctors in the UK to specialise in the treatment of children with cancer.
He established a highly successful department in Alder Hey Hospital, Liverpool, and in 1977 was appointed founder chairman of the United Kingdom Children’s Cancer Study Group. During his working career he saw survival rates improve from around 20 per cent to well over 65 per cent, progress which laid the foundations for today’s survival rates of more than 80 per cent.
He was born on January 13 1935 in Harrow, the eldest son of Maurice Martin, the Food Hall grocery manager of Fortnum & Mason, and Hilda, a St Thomas’ nurse. He was educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith and qualified in Medicine at Barts in 1958.
After various training posts in Brighton and Bristol, in 1963 he found himself at Great Ormond Street Hospital where the chemotherapy treatment of children with leukaemia was just commencing. When a post at Liverpool was advertised with an interest in children’s cancer he applied and was appointed in 1967.
Initially children with cancer were treated on a general paediatric ward, but as referrals and survival rates increased he slowly built the facilities needed to give children the best possible care.
He was one of the first to employ dedicated social workers from the Malcolm Sargent Fund and specialist nurses who went on to develop paediatric palliative care. He got parents involved in fundraising to build the first Ronald Macdonald House in the UK where parents of all children in the hospital could stay.
A tall man, Martin cut a striking figure, exuding an air of confidence and commanding respect from all. His ward sister Doris Hackle, an old-school nurse, was one of the few who knew how to play him.
Between them they built a happy and cohesive unit, always at the vanguard of treatment, and setting up an experimental bone marrow transplant service which is now a core element of some treatments. Martin would meet regularly with his counterparts in Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham for mutual support. A similar group was meeting in London and in January 1977 they came together to form the United Kingdom Children’s Cancer Study Group (UKCCSG).
There were 14 founding members and each was given a particular type of cancer to take the lead on and to develop national protocols of treatment. Martin was elected as the first Chairman and took the lead on Hodgkins Disease, a cancer of the lymph glands.
Over the next few years each region of the country developed its own centre which became part of the UKCCSG network, and within 10 years virtually all children were treated in these centres and enrolled into clinical trials to determine the best treatments.
There are now around 1,000 members of UKCCSG and the network has played a major role in clinical research – the backbone for the vastly improved chances of survival.
Martin was a practical man who loved sailing. He once built a boat in his dining room at home and had to repair the parquet flooring afterwards as it had the imprint of the boat etched into it. Invariably cheerful and smartly dressed, he loved food and opera, often going to Glyndebourne, and enjoyed reading biographies, travel books and The Daily Telegraph, enjoying the sports pages and the crossword.
A keen rugby player in his youth, he followed rugby internationals assiduously and was a supporter of Liverpool Football Club
He retired to North Wales where he continued his passion for gardening, opera and watching rugby until he began to develop dementia
He is survived by his wife, Julia, a paediatric nurse whom he had met while training in Bristol, and their three children.
John Martin, born January 13 1935, died August 1 2020