Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 399. doi: 10.1192/pb.24.10.399
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 399
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Ernst Jacoby
Formerly Consultant Psychiatrist, Highcroft Hospital, Birmingham
Robert Bluglass
Ernst Jacoby was one of that historically important and influential group
of refugee physicians who came to Britain in the 1930s and contributed so much
to patient care and medical, intellectual and social life during the following
decades. He was a highly respected and well-known Birmingham psychiatrist for
many years. 
Born on 25 October 1908 in Berlin, where he was educated, he graduated MD
Basle in 1934 at the age of 26, following in his father's footsteps. For the
next 5 years he worked as an ear, nose and throat specialist and in general
practice. However, the authorities began to restrict his freedom of practice
in a Jewish old people's home so he fled to England in 1939 to join his mother
and brother Fritz (who later became a distinguished academic and professor of
histology at Cardiff). Arriving with only one pound in his pocket and unable
to practise medicine for many years, he resorted to a variety of menial jobs
to survive.
During the war, he was interned on the Isle of Man and when he was finally
able to be included in the Medical Register he began the career climb from
junior medical officer to consultant psychiatrist. He was now in a position to
volunteer for the Army and became a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
He served mostly in India where he was in charge of West African patients.
After demobilisation, he completed his training in psychiatry at All Saints
Hospital in Birmingham, where he met his wife Barbara, a social worker, whom
he married in 1948. In due course he became a consultant at Highcroft
Hospital, Birmingham, where he was a popular colleague and a dedicated
clinician who put his patients first and spent little time on committees. The
sole exception was the Parole Board, on which he was proud to have been
invited to sit for two terms. He became an influential member, particularly
valued for his shrewd judgement. He very much enjoyed those years and the
friendships he made with members of the judiciary, probation service and
criminologists who served with him. He became increasingly interested in
forensic psychiatry and on retirement he developed a second career in that
speciality, working for many years on a sessional basis together with Barbara
at the Midland Centre for Forensic Psychiatry, which at the time was housed in
a bungalow at All Saints Hospital, until he retired again in his late 70s.
Ernst was a frequent and well-known expert witness in the Birmingham Courts
on major criminal cases. He was a staunch supporter at the time when forensic
psychiatry was struggling to establish itself in the West Midlands and he
contributed much wisdom to the training of young forensic psychiatrists, which
they long remembered and appreciated. He was, for instance, frankly sceptical
of psychological hypotheses mitigating responsibility and insisted that his
junior colleagues thought long and hard about what they were proposing before
a report was completed and they committed themselves in court.
He finally retired to a contented home life with Barbara and his family and
he kept in touch with a few close colleagues. Until a few months before his
death he enthusiastically followed his interests in music and opera, read
widely and was a keen bird watcher. But then Parkinson's disease overtook him,
culminating in a heart attack, which he survived for 2 months. He died on 8
December, 1999. He leaves his wife, son and daughter and four
grandchildren.
