Dr John Galletly

THE REPUTATION of the family doctor was at its peak during the middle years of the 20th century. Never before, and certainly never since, have those general practitioners in whose hands our lives often rest been so respected and even revered and the epitome of this dedication in Bourne was most certainly Dr John (Alistair) Galletly.

His father, also John, came to the district from Scotland in 1899 and after a spell at Rippingale, took over an existing practice in North Street, later moving to the house and surgery he built at No 40 North Road, and on his retirement he was succeeded by his son.

The young John saw service with the Lincolnshire Regiment during the Great War of 1914-18 when he was wounded and on discharge completed his medical training at Cambridge University and at some of the famous London hospitals, qualifying in surgery, obstetrics and public health, in conditions that had hardly changed since Victorian times. During the bitter winter of 1927, he returned to Bourne to help his father in general practice and stayed, swapping the routine of life on the wards for a daily round of births and deaths, fractures and bruises, mumps and measles, extracting tonsils, dealing with diseases and infections and even mixing his own medicines and rolling pills.

From then on, his professional life was spent in the town and when his father died in 1937, aged 75, he took over the practice and also succeeded him as the Medical Officer of Health for South Kesteven. During his career, he saw innumerable changes in medicine, new drugs, different methods of treatment, remarkable refinements in surgery and the implementation of the National Health Service in 1948 which he welcomed.

Yet he appeared to live in the past and even during his final years as a general practitioner, the room at his home that he used as a surgery remained in appearance as it was when he and his father had treated patients there decades before. A Bunsen burner was attached to the wall and a sink with hot and cold taps fitted into his workbench. On the shelves were bottles of acids and other chemicals, all neatly labelled in Latin, and it was these ingredients that he used in mixing his own medicines, often with a pestle and mortar.

He was also a man of high standards, in speech, dress and personal conduct, always observing the social mores of the time and abhorring any change that might upset accepted conventions. His junior partner, Dr Cecil Sweetnam, during a period of hot summer weather, once arrived to take surgery wearing an open necked shirt but it was quietly suggested that he should go home immediately and put on a tie, which he did.

Dr Galletly was also active in public life, becoming a member of Bourne Urban District Council and its chairman in 1961-62, and an independent member of Kesteven County Council being made an honorary alderman in 1974. He was also medical superintendent of Bourne Hospital for 30 years, a trustee of Bourne United Charities, a governor of Bourne Grammar School, vice-president of the Bourne British Legion and active with both the St John Ambulance Brigade and the Red Cross while his private passions were his rose garden, the countryside, old churches and nature conservation.

He retired in 1969 at the age of 70, having been practising in Bourne for 41 years and remained living at No 40 North Road while the surgery was moved to the new clinic in St Gilbert’s Road. But his interests in medicine, people and the community continued until the end of his life and he maintained a wide circle of friends until his death in 1993 at the age of 94. The house was subsequently sold and converted for use as the Galletly Group Practice that we have today, opened in 1996 and now serving a large section of the population. But the memory of the Galletly family lives on in a street off North Road that has been named Galletly Close after his mother, Mrs Caroline Galletly, who was elected the first woman chairman of Bourne Urban District Council in 1930-31.

In his retirement years, Dr Galletly confessed that he missed what he called, the old days and the close relationship that existed between doctor and patient that was often missing in today’s modern practices. Shortly before his death, he wrote: “The burden of the general practitioner has been lightened very much but is he still as much a member of the community as he used to be? Does he still have to wonder what is meant by ‘the vapours’ or dissuade a patient from the use of bread as a poultice or even goose grease? And will he find a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake for him after attending a confinement?”

These are among the memories of a remarkable medical man that have now surfaced, firstly through a conversation tape recorded in 1982 by Jim Jones of the Civic Society as the beginning of an oral history in Bourne. More importantly, a manuscript of the notes he made towards the end of his life has now been found, containing reminiscences of his father and of his own formative experiences to provide an intimate picture of medical practice during the early years of the 20th century.

The manuscript also contains a fascinating account of his father’s work as a family doctor in Rippingale and Bourne between 1899 and 1937 at a time when a doctor’s practice was limited to the distance of his transport, whether it was a dogcart or pony trap or even a bicycle, and the workload was daunting, often carrying out emergency operations on the kitchen table, coping with a drunken hospital matron or trying to find his way through the fens on a pitch black night to attend a confinement at Tongue End.

I have edited both accounts and combined them, adding a short biography and photographs to produce a small illustrated book on the life and times of Dr Galletly that has now been lodged in the reference section at the public library in South Street. A copy has also been included in the CD-ROM A Portrait of Bourne.

The introduction has been written by Dr Geoffrey Smith who joined the Galletly practice in 1961 and remained in Bourne until he retired in 1993. It was he who persuaded Dr Galletly to start writing his memoirs with a dictating machine and then his notes were transcribed by a secretary next day and he pays tribute to his former colleague as a man whose integrity, honesty and devotion to others helped shape many lives.

“His character has certainly been an example and role model to me”, he writes. “He was a man whose life saw change from carriages to Concorde yet he adapted without complaint. It was a privilege to have known him and Bourne has had few citizens more worthy than Alistair Galletly.”