Sir Richard Bayliss
Authors: Caroline Richmond
Journal: BMJ (2006)

​SirSir Richard Bayliss was one of the last great general physicians. He was a great speaker, who gave Harveian and Croonian orations at the Royal College of Physicians, and taught two generations of doctors at St Thomas', the Hammersmith, and Westminster Hospitals. He was physician to the queen and royal household for two decades. He was generous with his time and helped the careers of his students and proteges. His support and friendship to colleagues never faded, no matter how important he became.




Figure 1




Bayliss was born in Shropshire. His father was managing director of the firm of ironmasters that made the railings and ornamental gates for Regent's Park. From Rugby School he did his preclinical studies at Clare College Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge Footlights. He undertook his clinical studies at St Thomas' and played in a jazz/swing band. He qualified in 1941 and stayed on as house officer and registrar. From 1944 to 1945 he was resident assistant physician, a post that usually led to being made a consultant, but a peccadillo prevented this. Medical students and junior doctors at St Thomas' regarded him as a benign manifestation of God.

In 1945 he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps, where he was head of medical services in India for three years. He returned to the UK to a clinical lectureship at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, working under Sir John McMichael, and took a year out on a Rockefeller fellowship at Columbia University, New York.

For the rest of his career, until he retired in 1981, he was a consultant physician and endocrinologist at the Westminster Hospital, London. He was appointed dean of the medical school in 1960, a post he left when he had a heart attack in 1964. He went against the medical wisdom at the time by insisting on getting out of bed the day afterwards, and went skiing a fortnight later.

During his time at the Westminster and during his retirement he carried out private work at the Lister and King Edward VII Hospitals in London, and the King Edward VII Hospital in Midhurst. He also found time for many other activities including advisory, consultant, or director roles for the Royal Navy, the British Heart Foundation, Private Patients Plan, Pergamon Press, Nuffield Hospital Trust, JS Pathology Services, and the Royal College of Physicians. He was president of the endocrinology section of the Royal Society of Medicine during 1966-8 and honorary secretary of the Association of Physicians during 1958-63. He was uninterested in medical politics and did not seek high office in the medical establishment.

Sir Richard was physician to Her Majesty's household from 1964 to 1970, physician to the Queen 1970-82, and head of Her Majesty's medical household from 1973 to 1982. On one occasion, this required him to queue for a packet of painkillers at Boots the chemist, in Piccadilly Circus in the small hours. He also attended the Queen Mother, Princess Anne (attending the birth of her daughter), and the Duchess of Kent. He looked after Lord Avon, formerly Sir Anthony Eden, during his final illness in 1977.

He had a way with words. He was the author of an indispensable textbook, Practical Procedures in Clinical Medicine, published in 1950, but after the 3rd edition in 1960 could not be persuaded to revise it further. He also wrote a book for patients, Thyroid Disease—the Facts, first published in 1982, 3rd edition 1998.

Dick Bayliss was a warm person. People opened up to him. In 2004, a 45 year old burglar who preyed on the elderly bluffed his way into Bayliss's flat to read the meter. After spotting some medical books, the burglar proudly showed Sir Richard the scars of a recent heart bypass operation, which used a vein from his leg, performed at the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, where Bayliss had worked. Next day, Sir Richard noticed some silver snuffboxes were missing and passed the man's medical details to the police. The information soon led to the villain's arrest, in a house stuffed with stolen silver and jewellery. Sir Richard didn't get his snuffboxes back, but his evidence got the burglar eight years.

He was a lifelong smoker and once set fire to his flat with a cigarette. In recent years, he suffered a lot of ill-health but carried on very much as before. He was a great raconteur and, appropriately, a member of the Garrick Club.

He caught histoplasmosis, a serious and tenacious fungal infection, while on holiday in the USA. He was proud of diagnosing his aortic aneurysm and decided he would like to die from it, as it was as good a death as anything. When the time came, in 2001, he had it repaired and hugely enjoyed his new lease of life, which he wrote up with characteristic wit in the BMJ (2001;323: 731). His last skiing trip was in March this year. He wrote many short obituaries of colleagues for the BMJ and always found time to help me with the obituaries that I wrote. He died, his widow said, “reluctantly.”

He is survived by his third wife, Marina; a son by his first marriage; two daughters by his second marriage; and two stepsons. A daughter by his first wife predeceased him. Memorial service to be announced.

Sir Richard Bayliss, physician to Queen Elizabeth II (b 1917; q St Thomas', London 1941), d 21 April 2006.