Psychiatric Bulletin (2002) 26: 439. doi: 10.1192/pb.26.11.439
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2002) 26: 439
© 2002 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Michael Gwynne Douglas Davys
Formerly Consultant Psychiatrist, Bowden Clinic, Harrow-on-the-Hill
Penelope Buckland
Dr Davys was born in 1922 in Urchfont, Wiltshire, where his father, Revd
Canon S. M. D. Davys, was the vicar of St Michael's Church from 1915 to 1929.
Davys was educated at Salisbury Cathedral School, then Marlborough College. In
1940, he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read Medicine, qualifying in
1946, and continued his medical training at Guy's Hospital.
In May 1945, as one of the more senior medical students, he went to Belsen
to help with the massive medical problems as concentration camps were
liberated. The death rate, which had been 4% per day until 1 May, fell in 1
week to half the total and by 22 May had been reduced to 50 per day. His
letter home describes ‘scenes of indescribable horror, filth, squalor
and disease... they have been dying of starvation and typhus at about the rate
of 500-600 a day... I am very tired. We work a very hard 12-hour day. The
scenes I have seen here will be vivid memories for the rest of my
life’.
From 1950 to 1970, Davys served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve,
attached to HMS President. He achieved the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant
Commander and was awarded the VRD, the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Officers'
Decoration. After leaving the Navy, he returned to Guy's, qualifying as a
consultant physician and psychiatrist in 1953. He remained attached to Guy's
Hospital under Sir Arthur Fripp as Research Fellow in Psychiatry. He was also
ward clerk and part-time resident medical officer under Dr Macdonald Critchley
and Dr Meadows at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen
Square.
Upon qualifying, Davys worked mainly in the NHS as consultant psychiatrist
for the East Sussex Regional Board's Child Guidance Clinic in Brighton. He had
a special interest in depression in children.
In 1964, Davys left the NHS and established Bowden House, a private
psychiatric clinic in Harrow-on-the-Hill, where he was Consultant Psychiatrist
and Joint Medical Director until 1974. In 1966, he was elected Corresponding
Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, in recognition of meritorious
contributions to psychiatry, and became an International Fellow in 2002. The
US Government engaged him as a panel psychiatrist to vet visa applications,
and he was also a member of the Anglo-American Medical Society.
A keen skier since the early 1960s, firstly in St Moritz and then regularly
in Zermatt, he was a member of the Kandahar, Downhill Only and Ski Club of
Great Britain. Indeed, he became something of a local hero in Zermatt when, in
1964, his swift action in accessing vaccine during a typhoid epidemic saved
the town from disaster. He introduced many friends, entertainers and patients
to the mountains, and was skiing elegantly even last February, although no
longer able to repeat his ascent of the Mont Rosa on skins!
He died of complications following cardiac surgery in Brighton on 12 June
2002, aged 80. His marriage to Clarissa Merton ended in divorce in 1963.
Thereafter, he lived happily with his partner, Penny Buckland, who survives
him. There are no children.
