Timothy Roy Fenton
BMJ 2002; 325 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.325.7354.47/c (Published 06 July 2002) Cite this as: BMJ 2002;325:47Data supplement
Timothy Roy Fenton
Andrew Evans, Helen Issler, Bushra Al Rubeyi, Gwyneth Young
Consultant paediatrician Greenwich, London (b Bromley 1948; q St Bartholomew’s Hospital 1972), died in his sleep from a massive heart attack on 13 April 2002.
After Tonbridge School and Barts, where he was a keen rugby player, Tim embarked upon a career in adult medicine, becoming registrar to Dr Clark at St Leonard’s Hospital, London. He then changed direction, spending a year as house physician in paediatrics in Barragwanath Hospital, Johannesburg. Returning to London he pursued his paediatric career, working for, among others, Hugh Jolly, David Harvey, and Bill Marshall. After registrar posts at Queen’s in Hackney and Great Ormond Street, he spent three years in gastroenterology research at the Institute of Child Health, London. He was awarded an MSc in 1981. While he was senior registrar at Queen Mary’s, Carshalton, and St George’s, he received an MD for his thesis entitled "Disordered small intestinal motility in childhood and its role in the pathogenesis of toddler diarrhoea."
In parallel with his medical career, Tim was also active in medical politics, becoming familiar to many of us from his appearances in photograph and in print in the back pages of the BMJ. He sat on the National Hospital Junior Staff Committee and was chairman of the negotiating subcommittee 1983-1985. He was junior representative on the Council for Postgraduate Medical Education, the council of the BMA, the Review Body Evidence Committee, the JCC, the BPA Manpower Committee, and the Child Health Forum.
In 1988 he was appointed consultant paediatrician to Greenwich, initially at the Brook and Greenwich District Hospitals, and latterly in the newly refurbished Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. In Greenwich he quickly established himself as a hardworking and sought after general paediatrician. He also set up a paediatric gastroenterology service, maintaining his skills by assisting in the adult endoscopy list. So effective was he that he was soon being accosted in the corridor by physicians wanting him to expand his adult service.
As a consultant he continued his interest in research, collecting a huge series comparing 24 hour pH monitoring versus radiolabelled milk scanning in the assessment of persistent vomiting in infants. The work remains, alas, unpublished. He had studied the use of cisapride in infancy, lecturing on the subject in Brussels in 1988, so when its use was banned he was absolutely furious, regarding this as a ludicrous overreaction to an unproved risk. He continued using it in a highly selected group of "named" patients.
As a colleague he was held in the highest esteem both for his intellect and for his encyclopaedic, if sometimes eccentric, knowledge of paediatrics. Almost never roused to anger, his patience and consideration could calm the most outraged parent.
His medicopolitical career continued as a consultant. Immediately on arrival in Greenwich he became chairman of the local negotiating committee, a post that he retained until his death. He was chairman of the regional specialty subcommittee, chairman of the regional consultants specialist committee, member of CCST, representative of CCST on the health service committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) and on the council of the RCPCH, and chairman of the paediatric liaison committee for the BMA and the RCPCH. As a committee chairman he was widely regarded for his fairness. He prepared carefully and filed everything.
Above all else, and in spite of his hectic workload, Tim was a devoted family man. He married Lesley in 1976. They had a wide circle of mostly non-medical friends, many of whom enjoyed Fenton hospitality in Tim and Lesley’s splendid Hackney home.
Tim’s handwriting was famously impossible to read. In recent years it became progressively smaller until this and other symptoms led last year to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. He was initially upset, but his sense of fun rapidly got the better of him, and he was soon pointing out to his colleagues that he could retire on health grounds any time he chose. Sadly, his devotion to the children of Greenwich, his colleagues, and the wider world of British medical practice kept him working until, without any warning, he died in his sleep from a massive myocardial infarct.
He leaves a wife, Lesley; and three daughters.
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