Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll – Memoir of a Police Doctor

By Wesley Boff

I can claim to have enjoyed a satisfying and fulfilling medical career. British General Practice was the jewel in the NHS crown and I was a Family Doctor during its heyday before the Government decided to take control and tell the doctors how to do their job, demoralize the profession and seriously compromise patient care, destroying the respect between patients and their doctors and turning a vocation into a chore. I was fortunate that I began my career at the right time and got out at the right time. My almost thirty years working with the local police force was hard work but once I’d seen a few corpses and gained the respect of the local constabulary I enjoyed the work immensely even if I was so often denied a good night’s sleep. The case load varied from the gruesome to the amusing but looking back it was never boring.
Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll – Memoir of a Police Doctor is an account of my experience as a Forensic Physician – a facet of the rich tapestry of medical practice that Joe Public never realized existed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398468894

Wesley Boff

Wesley Boff is the pseudonym of Dr Terry Moore. He spent his medical career in South Yorkshire working as a family doctor and, for almost thirty years, he contracted to provide forensic physician services to his local police force. He lives in Florida.

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About the Author

Wesley Boff is the pseudonym of Dr Terry Moore. He spent his medical career in South Yorkshire working as a family doctor and for almost thirty years, he contracted to provide forensic physician services to his local police force. He lives in Florida.

Dedication

To my late wife, Susan; and my daughters, Katie and Sophie.

They had to put up with a lot.

Copyright Information ©

Wesley Boff 2022

The right of Wesley Boff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398467729 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398468894 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

I am indebted to the constables, sergeants, and inspectors and especially the Custody Sergeants of South Yorkshire Police. Between us, for twenty-seven years we did a difficult and thankless job without undue incident or complaint. Apart from when I was tired out or there was fog on the motorway, I enjoyed every minute.

Thanks to the makers of Red Bull who probably prevented my premature demise by falling asleep on the M18 after repeated nights on call.

I thank my late wife, Susan, for putting up with the arduous long hours and the nocturnal disturbances and for standing with me when certain people tried to destroy our relationship.

Thanks must go to my chemistry master, Sandy Powell, who pushed me, kicking and screaming, into a medical career and to Professor Francis James Patrick O’Gorman F.R.C.S., M.R.C.O.G., M.R.C.P. (FO’G.), who taught me to believe in myself, to work hard and to laugh. Thanks to Prof Alan Usher, the doyen of English Forensic Pathologists, for his encouragement and humour.

And lastly to my present wife, Tanya, who has brought some happiness to a tortured soul.

Prologue

Halloween—1980 something

The bedside phone always clicked a second before it started to ring. When I was on call for the police, I was incapable of deep sleep, and the click woke me up before Sue was woken by the phone ringing. The police officer in the control room apologised for disturbing my slumbers but by then, I was long used to being disturbed.

What have you got?

There’s a body hit by a train on the railway line near Askern. Can you attend?

Sometimes it was easy money and sometimes it wasn’t. This decidedly was not.

A glance at the illuminated clock on the dresser showed 1:15 a.m. He gave me the location, but I didn’t pay much attention as these things were usually easy to find. Just look for half a dozen police cars and that will be the place.

Be careful Doc. The roads are icy and the gritters haven’t been out. This cold snap has taken them by surprise.

Sue stirred as I dressed.

Body on the railway line, I said, and she told me to be careful and went back to sleep. I dressed including a thick shirt and pullover and went downstairs and added a fleece-lined parka. Nobody would be expecting me to wear a collar and tie but then I didn’t usually wear a tie whether the guy was dead or alive. The control room was right about the temperature. There must have been ten degrees of frost. I sprayed the car windscreen with de-icer and set off. A journey which should have taken me twenty-five minutes at that time of night took forty-five and a couple of skids. I found the lane that ran parallel to the East Coast main line but no sign of the giveaway police cars. I spent ten minutes driving three times up and down the lane and cursing before I saw about ten police cars parked about 150 yards away over a frozen ploughed field adjacent to the railway line. No lights, no sign of life but that had to be the place. I parked the car on the grass by the side of the lane rather than risk getting stuck in the ploughed field. I walked towards the parked police cars. No sign of life-or death-apart from some intermittent flashes of light, presumably on the railway line, half a mile away to my left. Probably flashes from police photographers’ cameras. I started walking towards the lights keeping a wary eye over my shoulder for approaching trains. It was seriously cold. After ten minutes, I could see a group standing by the railway line ahead. There was a full moon. No ghosts or ghouls. At least it wasn’t raining-too cold.

Eyes wide open, hands in pockets. Thirty yards from the group I shone my torch on a strip of denim material about nine inches long, frozen to the railway line. Another fifteen yards and a neatly severed head lay between the railway lines. No doubt, the deceased had pulled the collar of his denim jacket around his neck before he put his neck on the freezing metal rail. There was the usual group of three or four detectives who stood around in these circumstances together with half a dozen uniformed officers. Only one of the detectives was dressed for the cold. He said, Evening, Doc. We think it’s a woman from Balby.

Not unless she shaves, I said, walking over to the base of the post that carried the electricity line and looking at the denim jacket that lay at the base of the post. The collar was missing but an arm was in the right sleeve. No rings, no tattoos, nothing in the pockets, no note. At the side of the track, twenty yards further down the line lay the rest of the body.

A glance confirmed the deceased was definitely male. No rings on the hands, no tattoos, no scars. Nothing in the pockets of his jeans.

Anything else? I said to the group of detectives.

Yeah. Could I borrow your coat? said one.

No. Certified dead, for the sake of the record, at 2:25 a.m. Kid’s probably in his late teens or early 20s.

I walked alone back along the track passing the body removers walking the other way. I said to them, I wouldn’t want your job – not tonight anyway. They were too cold to reply. At least they could divide the load.

I got back to the car without developing hypothermia or twisting an ankle, walking over the ploughed field, and switched on the engine and the heater and defrosted for a minute. The police were going to have to wait to identify the youth until somebody reported him missing. I drove slowly home with only one skid. I kept several self-recorded CDs in the car so that the music would keep me awake. By an unhappy coincidence, Nina Simone’s mournful voice began:

I’m gonna lay my head on some lonely railroad line,

Let the 2-19 train ease my troubled mind.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I felt morose. Sometimes this job almost got to me – almost.

I was at my surgery for my 8:30 a.m. start.

Chapter One

My Vocation

It is said that a medical career is a vocation, by which is meant a calling from the Almighty.

Not for me, it wasn’t. A calling maybe, but a calling to forty years of a well-paid, safe, ever-challenging job, with a good pension at the end – it was even better as a consequence of Mr Blair’s General Practice reforms of 2004 – the respect of my fellow men, or at least most of them and at least in the early days a calling to various bars and a lot of available women. If I helped my fellow men and women, that was a bonus. If I didn’t, I’d like to think I did my best.

I was born and brought up by middle-class Methodist parents on the Wirral. I went to the local grammar school, and it is probably true to say that I distinguished myself academically, my sporting achievements being confined to the chess board and the bridge table. A sadistic gym teacher put a prepubertal me – aged twelve – in a boxing ring with a classmate who was twice as big as me. He had the build of a gorilla, had plenty of hair under his armpits and round his honeymoon tackle and was the first in the class to own a razor. In front of the class, the sadist yelled, Why are you running away?

Self-preservation, sir, I muttered.

A voice at the back said, Because he can’t fucking fly.

Neesham, I heard that, said the sadist.

The rugby field provided some sanctuary. I found that if I made myself available for the fourth XV, I could stand on the wing for the whole game and neither the ball nor anybody else came anywhere near me. The only thing I was in danger from was hypothermia.

In the sixth form, I was obviously heading for A grades in physics, chemistry, and biology but a week before I was due to fill in the University Application (UCCA) form, I didn’t know what I wanted to study. However, I did know that I wanted to get away from my sheltered insular home life and see more of the real world. It was, after all, the ‘swinging sixties’ and I wasn’t doing much swinging. Little did I know that by the time I retired, I was going to experience all that life had to offer – all the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll I could cope with.

My chemistry master, Sandy P, doubled as my careers master. He took me aside and asked what I was going to study. I mentioned pharmacology, marine biology and even forestry.

Did you know that the country produces eighty forestry graduates a year? The Forestry Commission takes two of them. Don’t waste yourself. Only one thing you should be studying and that’s medicine. Boys from this school always go to Liverpool University. They are certain to give you an offer.

There was no discussion with my parents. My mother was obliged to give up her idea that I might enter the clergy but instead hoped that I might pursue God’s work as a medical missionary. Had she known that I would spend a substantial part of my medical career clearing up after the devil’s works, she might have had something to say.

So the application form read: first, University College London Medical School; second, Liverpool; third, Bristol and Sheffield fourth. Sandy said I wouldn’t get an interview at University College as they didn’t take northern grammar schoolboys unless they played county standard rugby. I knew that as I’d read it in Richard Gordon’s ‘Doctor in the House’. Surprisingly, they did grant me an interview and then rejected me. Thank goodness that they didn’t accept me because I couldn’t have abided living in the smoke for five years. Liverpool sent me an offer of three C grades without bothering with an interview. Bristol rejected me outright, arrogant buggers. Sheffield sent me an appointment date for an interview. I’d never been to the place before, so I got on the train in Liverpool and off at ‘Steel City’, or at least it was in 1967. A kindly senior lecturer and world expert on toxoplasmosis interviewed me and an offer of a B and two C grades duly arrived.

Sheffield it was to be.

As a naive eighteen-year-old, I did not realize that filling in that UCCA form would be one of the defining moments of my life; it dictated my choice of career and where I would live and work for most of my adult life. Looking back, no complaints.

On a wet and windy day, in late September 1967, my parents drove me across the Pennines and dropped me and my meagre possessions outside a hall of residence that looked like a Liverpool tower block.

I duly took up residence in room H5 – my little box inside the big box.

That evening, my parents safely departed, I fell in love. My first pint of beer. 1/10d, how times have changed.

Chapter Two

Medical School

On the first day of term, about eighty new students assembled in the lecture hall at the medical school to hear various introductory lectures and instructions. The only one I remember was a harangue from a bowtie-wearing final year student who was President of the Medical Society. He gave us stern instructions about etiquette and expected behaviour as we attempted to join the most esteemed of professions. He struck me as a pompous prick, not the last I was going to meet.

The next day we assembled outside the Anatomy Room. The doors opened at 9 a.m. prompt to reveal twenty corpses on stands on marble-topped tables. Four to a stiff arranged alphabetically. The smell of formalin was overpowering. Over the next fifteen months, we dissected every little bit. The four ‘M’s’ at my table were unlucky enough to get a fat one.

For our first two years at medical school, we studied anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, beer, and women and mixed with our fellow students doing different courses. Most of the following three years would be spent at the city’s teaching hospitals, not on the university campus. We would get to wear white coats, carry a stethoscope, and see real live patients (and some real dead ones). We lost our right to long student holidays, our entitlement reducing from twenty-two weeks to three.

The four ‘M’s’ and two or three others made up a group who were taught the basics of history-taking and examination at the patient’s bedside. Every junior doctor on the surgical and medical wards carried a stethoscope, a reflex hammer, and a pen torch. The pen torch was useful for looking in patients’ mouths and checking the size of the pupils of the eye. A third use had been shown to my group of students when a surgical registrar had shown the group a man with fluid around his testicle called a hydrocoele. If you shone the pen torch into the fluid, provided it was dark enough, it lit up like a tessellated Chinese lantern. Hell of a party trick. The group learned the technique was called ‘transillumination’. The next day, Mr K, an orthopaedic surgeon by trade, took our group to the bedside of a man with ascites i.e., fluid in the abdominal cavity around the guts.

Mr K said, This patient has ascites. How are we going to test for it?

John G replied, Transillumination, Sir?

A look appeared on Mr K’s face that was a cross between a smile and a frown.

Well, you could try shoving an arc light up his rectum.

The group wasn’t sure if he was joking.

At the start of our third year, we began clinical attachments to the various medical specialities, in our case, starting with surgery. This meant that we were attached to a Consultant Surgeon and his junior staff, usually a registrar, a senior house officer and a newly qualified junior house officer collectively known as a ‘firm’.

The four ‘M’s’ and two others duly turned up at Mr F’s outpatient clinic at 9 a.m. on a Monday for the start of a thirteen-week attachment.

We were sitting in a group in the WRVS canteen, enjoying coffee and the best sausage rolls in town when a staff nurse walked up to us.

You Frilly Willy’s new students? she asked.

We’re waiting for Mr F, Andy M volunteered.

You’re the lot I’m looking for then, said the nurse. Come with me.

Why do they call him Frilly Willy? Dermot M asked.

Rumour has it that he was circumcised with pinking shears, came the reply. I’ve never been close enough to find out for sure.

She ushered us into a consulting room with a desk, a chair for the Consultant, two chairs for the patient and a screened examination couch. Six chairs were arranged behind the Consultant’s chair which was occupied by a middle-aged balding bespectacled man, who, in a Scottish brogue, introduced himself as Mr F.

You my new group of students?

Yes sir, we replied in unison.

Right. Three of you go next door with the staff nurse to my registrar, Mr Clark’s room and three stay here. Two ‘M’s’ and I stayed with Frilly Willy. Mr F read the Family Doctor’s referral letter out loud.

This 50-year-old steelworker has a right inguinal hernia. He is otherwise fit. Please see and arrange the repair. Yours sincerely.

Staff nurse, ask Mr Smythe to come in. She ushered in a powerfully built man wearing his Sunday best.

What’s the problem, sir? said Frilly.

Got a lump round me honeymoon tackle.

Does it hurt?

Aches a bit when I’ve finished me shift.

And you are otherwise fit and well?

Yes.

Your doctor says you are a steelworker. Is that a heavy job?

Yes, sir.

OK, Mr Smythe. Go behind the curtains and drop your trousers down. Do you mind if a couple of these medical students examine you before I do?

He raised no objection and the staff nurse ushered him behind the curtains closely followed by two ‘M’s’.

Call me when you are finished, said Mr F, and remember the golden rule. First, inspect with your eyes. Then palpate with your hands. Then use your stethoscope to listen with your ears but only if appropriate. George M asked Mr Smythe to drop his trousers. He duly obliged but the two could see nothing amiss.

Cough please, said George. Mr Smythe obliged and a lump about the size of a lemon appeared in his groin. George asked Mr Smythe to get on the couch and the lump disappeared.

Frilly appeared behind the curtains and George proudly asked the patient to cough again and the lump reappeared.

Well done, said Mr F. Typical inguinal hernia.

Mr Smythe, I’ll put your name on my waiting list. You’ll be in hospital for a couple of nights, but I warn you that unless your employers can find you light work, you will be off work a couple of months.

It soon became apparent that Frilly Willy didn’t suffer fools or anybody else gladly. A young mother entered his consulting room holding the hand of her three-year-old son who, according to the GP, needed circumcising. The lad had a dummy in his mouth.

Frilly said to the mother, I see your son still needs a dummy. What else is wrong with him?

Another time, a grossly obese woman came through the door and Frilly said, Madam, please get on the scales. The reading confirmed she was greatly overweight.

Frilly looked over his half-moon glasses at her and said, You are 56 pounds overweight. Why don’t you try putting it in a suitcase and walking around with it? Then you will see what your overindulgence is doing to your back and your heart. If you lose the weight, you likely won’t need your gallstones operating on.

Ward rounds were formal occasions when the entire firm, students, the ward sister, and staff nurse reviewed each patient at the end of the patient’s bed and the boss gave orders as to what treatment was to be prescribed and what tests ordered. Liz, the junior house officer, chewed gum throughout. After the ward round, Frilly Willy went off to see his private patients and the registrar, Mr John C, the senior house officer, Liz, and the students retired to the coffee room while sister disappeared to arrange coffee.

Mr C said, Liz, will you please stop chewing gum on ward rounds.

But I like chewing gum, Liz retorted.

I like breaking wind, but I try not to do it on ward rounds.

George M muttered, Someone let one go on the ward round. We all thought it was sister B. Mr C shot George a look that should have turned him to stone but George was saved from further admonishment by the sister, pushing the door open with a tray of coffee.

The start of clinical attachments heralded changes in the four ‘M’s’ domestic arrangements. They left the Hall of Residence and managed to rent a scruffy terraced house over a shop in a not very salubrious part of town. Fortunately, the best ‘chippy’ in town was across the road so we wouldn’t starve. Scruffy or not, it at least gave us a bedroom each. The rent was the princely sum of six quid a week for all four of us. The shop was occupied by an East European jeweller who was, with the benefit of hindsight, obviously schizophrenic and occasionally complained we were poisoning him with fumes. We told him it was Andy M’s flatulence.

We were some way from the university campus and so we took our beer drinking to a new venue, the Millhouses pub and quickly became acquainted with an Irish GP called Con. He was in the pub every night and put away seven or eight pints every time. One evening he came in with a sob story.

I was called out last night after I’d had a skinful. I went to the patient’s home, but the poor man was already dead. I told the family I’d come back in the morning and attend to the formalities, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember the address.

Oh dear, said Dermot M.

I’ve lost meself a bleeding stiff, said Con.

I don’t suppose the stiff minds, said Dermot M.

On another occasion, in the middle of the night, the doctor had visited a man who lived with his family in an old, terraced house with only an outside toilet. At 7 a.m., little Johnny came flying back into the house and yelled, Mum, Dr G is passed out in the toilet!

The medics took their sport seriously. George M was captain of the Faculty soccer team. Andy M played on the wing for the Medics rugby team. Every year, for the last twenty years, the ‘rugger buggers’ had an annual dinner. Never the same place twice