David Freeman's Valedictory to John Henderson at His Memorial Service in 1992Miriam, John's sister Anne, his children Richard, Sally, Jane, his stepsons Michael,. Danny and David, their spouses grandchildren, relatives patients and friends. Friends and patients of John are one and the same as all his patients became his friends and all his friends became his patients.
John was born into a “one parent family" in February 1915 his father Jack having been killed in France in September 1914, whilst serving as a Major in the Indian Army. John always used to tell the story that his mother Muriel went to India on what was known a$ the Fishing Fleet - girls who failed to catch a husband in England and were hoping to do so in India.
As it happens Muriel and Jack met on the boat and her letters home were soon filled with mentions of Major Henderson. They were married in 1910. His mother, left with Angela 3 years old and baby John, was an exceptional woman - competent, artistic, a painter but above all an exceptional gardener and woodworker. Muriel Hanbury had come from a family renowned for their gardens. This love of gardening and woodwork were passions which she passed on to John.
John was brought up in the country and remained a country boy at heart all his life.
He had a very happy childhood. When he was 10 his mother gave him £7 with which he built his first workshop in the garden and started his life long passion. His mother used to carve in wood herself and today in the cottage at Hambleden there stands a sideboard that she carved. In John's magnificent workshop, which includes a lathe and a bandsaw - the best amateur workshop that live ever seen, - there still remain a number of her tools. John’s tools, as befits a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists were always beautifully, clean, well oiled - sharpened in a state fit enough for surgery. Many years later John visited Bulmer, his old home. I he new owners allowed him to see round the house. When they came to what had been his room, the owners. pointed to a clock set into a wardrobe, which they admired but which no longer worked. John had set this clock in the wardrobe himself - he promptly offered to repair it, and did so on the spot.
John put his school years to good use. He played the violin unremarkably, according to him, and did all the electrical work for the school shows. He followed this at University by lighting up the Cambridge Footlights. The ever competent Muriel had chosen St John's College because it had a modern building with bathrooms. At one lecture the students were invited to examine an eccentric Fenlander who had lived for many years on a diet consisting mainly of tinned sardines. They were asked to diagnose his illness, and all failed. He had beri-beri: - the only case he ever saw in his life.
John trained at the Westminster Hospital, leaving when he qualified in 1941, to join the Navy as a Surgeon Lieutenant. His mother's present when he went to sea was a Mae West. We can only guess at her feelings.
Last Friday night out of the blue I talked to Commander Gregory who was No.1 on the frigate Chanticleer with John as his Medical Officer for two years. They were great friends and together they wrote and printed the Ship's Newsletter which may have been the catalyst for John's yearly news-letter to the family. Once a year John would take his portable type-writer on holiday with him and sit quietly typing away the news of all the family before sending copies to them all.
It was fitting that during his service, John spent some time in the Far East, where his grandfather Edward Henderson, who qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh in 1864, had served in Shanghai where he was a pioneer of western medicine.
John always had an eye for tall attractive women. In 1944 he met tall attractive Wren officer Barbara Faber and married her.
When he was demobbed after the War he began to practise obstetrics. He was Registrar at the Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital in Taplow and then temporary consultant at the King Edward VII Hospital in Windsor. He fully expected this appointment to be made permanent but this was not to be and he turned his, energies in the direction of general practice, joining his great friend and golfing partner Stephen Blaikie first in Ovington Square, and then from 1967 at 3 Basil Street - where they gained and kept a high reputation, a very high reputation, being joined by Christopher Powell-Brett and, after Stephen's death in 1976; by Michael Gormley.
Soon after the practice moved to Basil Street, John was outside the building, dressed in workmen’s clothes and fixing the brass plate to the door himself. The porter from the building came up to him and said "That’s a good piece of work, my man, just step round when you've finished we've got another little job for you to do.” He did step around and do the little job without telling the porter he was the new tenant.
In 1948 John and Barbara had their first child Richard, quickly followed by Sally and then Jane.
In 1960 John and Barbara acquired the cottage in Hambleden. principally in order to have a country place to take Sally and Jane out of School at week-ends. To John's immense delight Richard followed him and his great-grandfather into medicine.
Barbara died suddenly in 1968. John was heartbroken and threw himself into his work, finding immense comfort in that, and in the garden at Hambleden. The cottage is set in the Chilterns and built out of the hillside. The rockery at the front built by Barbara is a dream. In the spring the whole hill is alive with daffodils. Honeysuckle and clematis abound, wild strawberries, raspberries, red currants, gooseberries, climbing hydrangea all carefully tended by John. His advice to people working hard, to get their hands dirty in the soil as therapy, was certainly a case of practising what you preach, with beneficial results for John and all who came into contact with him. In 1974 John married a patient, Miriam Karlin. He had been her family doctor since 1955. Miriam had been a widow for eight years. She was also very tall, slim and very attractive. His eyesight was still good.
By this time Sally had become a physiotherapist and Jane a teacher. Miriam also brought to the marriage three children all boys, Michael Danny and David, ranging from 16 years to 23. The boys promptly nicknamed John; "W. S. F.” - wicked stepfather - a title which he greatly enjoyed and used to describe himself.
In 1980 when major works of conversion were carried out at the cottage, the workshop was the first room to be completed and incidentally the biggest. John taught his youngest stepson David how to make cheese boards - one of his favourite presents - so that the production line could continue.
I'm sure all of you who have visited John in his rooms in Basil Street have noticed the frogs in their tens, possibly into the hundreds. The frogs started one Christmas when Barbara had baked a cake with little trinkets in it. John drew a frog and from then on his family and patients inundated him with frogs of every description from silver to plastic, all of which he devotedly kept in his rooms in Basil Street.
The practice attracted famous patients, especially from the world of politics and entertainment. John's patients became his friends, his friends his patients. He loved his work and was practising until the day he went into hospital. The many letters sum him up when they say “I've lost my best friend, my main support”. The letters from colleagues can be summed up as saying "he was an example to all of us". He was a consummate professional - difficult to define but we all recognised him as one, whether he was treating us, our spouses, children, grandchildren or parents, as he did for all my family over four generations.
John had eclectic tastes, ranging from Gilbert & Sullivan to the Royal Opera house productions. He enjoyed the Henley Royal Regatta - at the bottom almost of the Hambleden road. He had recently played a bit of golf again. He had a vast store of limericks, rhymes, snatches of popular song and poetry, which he reproduced at the drop of a hat with astonishing fluency and point.
He loved people, no matter who they were. He was interested in them, always curious, and open to their experiences, however different from his own. In fact though the least affected and self-important of men he always commanded respect, and gained affection in return for the generosity with which he gave his time and attention to others.
John. the posthumous child, became a father figure to all those around him. John and Miriam together loved and were proud of their six children, their spouses, and thirteen grandchildren. John would have been particularly proud of James, his first grandchild playing the organ before the start of the service today.
John was very honoured that in 1991 he was appointed a Commander of the British Empire. a particularly poignant award for the son of a man who had been killed while serving Empire. During the last two years Miriam had been very ill. John nursed her with care and compassion doing his best to relieve her pain. When his turn came. he faced the end with the dignity and fortitude he had shown all his life.
We will all have our own particular memories of John. I shall afways treasure our walks and talks together across the fields, in whatever weather, with Hairy and Drummer, his rough haired Jack Russells, to the pub at Skirmett. You will all have your own memories.
John had a good life. did nothing mean or low. He made many hundreds of people better. He was a perfect gentleman. |