F/L Denis George Blackwood Richards, RAF Medical Officer

[Danny152]

This chap was M.O. at RAF North Coates, mid 1943. Has anyone seen a picture of him? Thanks in advance.

Danny

Denis George Blackwood Richards was a consultant physician at West Bromwich. He was born in Birmingham, the son of Humphrey George Richards, a farmer, and Blanche Ethel née Pratt, the daughter of a master baker. He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham and then went on to university in the city, qualifying in 1939.

From October 1939 to April 1940 he was a casualty and orthopaedic house surgeon at Walsall General Hospital, and then from April to August 1940 a house surgeon at Birmingham General Hospital. He was subsequently a resident medical officer in Banbury.

From May 1941 to June 1946 he was a medical officer in the RAF, spending three and a half years overseas, mainly in Africa. He was demobilised with the rank of squadron leader.

After the war he was briefly a house physician, first at Royal Salop Hospital, Shrewsbury, and then at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. In 1948 he was appointed as a registrar and then a senior registrar in the medical professorial unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. From 1955 he was a part-time consultant physician in Walsall and West Bromwich. He had a special interest in diabetes and cardiovascular medicine, starting the coronary care unit in West Bromwich in the early days of such units.

Outside medicine, he loved books, particularly French and German literature. He married Mary Elizabeth Tighe, also a doctor, in 1949 and they had two sons, John and James. He died from cancer of the pancreas.