Dr Douglas Noel Golding
BORN DUBLIN, DECEMBER 15, 1931. DIED LONDON, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, AGED 83
THE CONSULTANT rheumatologist Dr Douglas Golding was particularly noted for his contributions to post-graduate medical education. He was an active member of the London Jewish Medical Society, regularly attending and bringing cases to the monthly Sunday morning clinical meetings at the now long-defunct London Jewish Hospital in Stepney Green.
His contributions to his field were recognised when he was made president of the Rheumatological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. Douglas retained his connection with Dublin, later becoming a visiting lecturer at Trinity College and an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland as well as for the Society of Apothecaries in London.
His father was a GP; his mother the founder of a shop for bridal wear called the French Shop, which was the first of its kind and well known throughout Ireland. During the Second World War his father joined the Royal Navy and with his mother and two younger
Dr Douglas Golding: rheumatologist active in medical education brothers, Douglas was evacuated to Bermuda.
After his undergraduate medical education at Trinity College, Dublin, Douglas completed an internship in Canada and then settled in England where he trained in his specialty in Newcastle upon Tyne and then in London. In lodgings in Newcastle, he once accidently sent his tsitsit to the laundry. It came back listed as “Silk Chestwarmer with Tassels”, much to the amusement of Douglas and his friends.
Quickly acquiring the necessary higher degrees, he was appointed consultant rheumatologist at an early age to the East Herts and West Essex group of hospitals, centred at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow in 1965.
Over the following decades he was particularly active in medical education, publishing four books for students and post-graduate trainees and lecturing widely on various aspects of his field.
Douglas met his wife Hinda Crivon when she was just 15 and they married four years later in 1963 in Dublin. Hinda, 12 years his junior, also came from a well known Irish family who were friends of the Goldings.
Douglas and Hinda shared a great love of music and a capacity for friendship. In their home in rural Essex, they raised their sons Leslie and Simon, and enjoyed entertaining their wide circle of colleagues and friends, including many from both the London and Cambridge Jewish communities.
Douglas sang in the synagogue choir as a teenager and was a gifted musician who enjoyed playing the piano almost to the very end of his life and accompanying his sons as they played the violin and viola, accompanied by Hinda singing.
He was much involved with the Cambridge Friends of the Haifa Technion, sometimes playing the piano at their fundraising events.
In middle life Douglas had been a keen sailor, teaching his sons the nautical skills in the family boat at weekends when the demands of busy academic, NHS and private practice commitments allowed.
He and Hinda eventually moved to London to be near their children but his last decade was marred by progressive deterioration of his health. He was cared for devotedly by Hinda and by successive dedicated carers. The first of these, Alina, keen to learn English and accompanying Douglas to classes at the University of the Third Age, may arguably have been one of very few Romanian women ever to have found themselves studying James Joyce!
He is survived by Hinda, his brother Bobby in Australia, sons Leslie and his wife Emma, Simon and his wife Stacey and grandchildren Ollie, Josh, Sara and Rafaela.