Peter George Higgins
BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n51 (Published 08 January 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;372:n51- Jenny Harries,
- Katherine Harries
Peter George Higgins was born in Kettering on 11 July 1926 to a non-medical family. His grandfather was a vicar, and his father was a sales manager in the shoe trade. He had one elder brother who suffered severe brain trauma at birth, resulting in lifelong epileptic seizures and social constraints. Peter could remember, as a very young child, the hard work of pushing his brother in a pram across fields to a distant farm to obtain unpasteurised milk for what was then considered the latest “treatment” for his brother’s condition. The family moved to Stopsley, Bedfordshire, where Peter attended first junior school, then Luton Grammar Schoo,l and where he met his future wife, Marjorie Simpson, who was a pupil at the parallel Luton Girls’ High School and a member of Luton Girls’ Choir. Whether inspired by his early view of illness through his brother’s trauma, or from the associated need to strike out independently from a difficult home environment, he moved to London to study medicine at Westminster Medical School, qualifying in 1950.
Peter set out initially on a career in paediatrics, completing house physician roles at Westminster Hospital’s children’s department and subsequently at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge. In 1952 he joined the Royal Air Force, …
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