Fred Stone

Professor Fred Stone, who was one of the leading child psychiatrists of his generation and steered the development of child psychiatry services in Scotland, has died at the age of 87 in Glasgow.

Stone will be remembered for his groundbreaking work in placing children’s emotional and psychological needs at the centre of paediatric medicine in Scotland. Over four decades, he drove forward developments in liaison psychiatry, infant mental health, and recognition of autism, and he was instrumental in establishing Scotland’s internationally renowned approach to justice for children through its Children’s Hearings system.

Frederick Hope Stone, who was universally known as Fred, was born into a Jewish family of eastern European descent in Glasgow’s west end on 11 September 1921. As a schoolboy attending Hillhead High School, he showed an early interest in medicine when helping his father, Marcus, an optician and pharmacist, to teach students in optics.

He studied medicine at Glasgow University during the war years, graduating MB, ChB in 1945, and it was at university that he met his future wife, Zelda, an arts student. They married in 1946 while Fred was working as a house …