Maurice William Beaver

Maurice William Beaver was brought up in London and Cornwall during the second world war and was educated at Ilford County High School for Boys. In 1949 he went to study medicine at University College Hospital Medical School in London. He served as a junior house officer with a consultant surgeon in Portsmouth and at the Scott Isolation Hospital for Infectious diseases in Plymouth, where he acquired experience in general and genitourinary medicine.

Maurice qualified in 1955, and national service took him overseas to serve as a captain, in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Malaya. He enjoyed his time there, as doctor to a British Army regiment, an Australian army regiment, and a Gurkha regiment—particularly his work supporting the Gurkha soldiers and their families.

On returning to the UK in 1957, Maurice secured a post as a house officer in the department of obstetrics, gynaecology, and genitourinary medicine at King’s Lynn General Hospital in Norfolk, where he met his future wife, Marian Pollyn, a midwifery sister. Originally he had planned to take up a further commission in the RAMC and thereafter to become a general practitioner in Cornwall. Unfortunately, however, in 1958 he …