Jerrold Ross Burgess

Jerrold Burgess died peacefully from heart failure in hospital on 4 January 2001. He was a consultant psychiatrist — his patients would say the consultant psychiatrist — at the West Cumberland Hospital, Whitehaven, and Garlands Hospital, Carlisle, for over 20 years.

He was educated at Dartington and qualified in Dublin in 1956 after completing his National Service in the Army. His subsequent house jobs included a post in paediatrics and he retained a particular interest in the young throughout his career. He trained in psychiatry initially at Bristol, Barrow and Glenside Hospitals, and then moved up to St James' Hospital in Leeds as a senior registrar. When I was seeking a congenial second consultant to share the service for West Cumberland in 1966, he was commended to me by his chief, Julian Roberts, who assured me that I would find him “as easy as an old shoe”. And so it proved.

We worked together until I left in 1983 with only one cross word (entirely my fault) and shared a one-in-two rota without conflict. He never complained about his workload, was always accommodating and flexible and quite remarkably cheerful. He had only a nodding acquaintance with the clock but his patients gladly adjusted. A phobic dislike of dictating machines limited the quantity of his letters but he was the most accessible of consultants; communication with him was always easy, informative and pleasant. As time went on he took an increasing role in the management of the West Cumberland Hospital and gathered a respect not always given to psychiatrists in a district general hospital. Moreover, he became the psychiatrist of choice to medical families in the area and carried that gratifying but arduous role of being the doctor's doctor.

He was an extremely pleasant, gentle, rather shy, large man, humorous and generous. His home was always full of music and laughter. A diligent and skilled gardener, he skied in the winter and sailed in the summer (for some years he had his own yacht on the uncertain waters of the Solway), loved fast cars, was widely read and very knowledgeable about art. His great passion was for music, particularly opera, and he was a competent but private clarinettist.

He retired in 1988 but could not abandon the work habit and did a series of locum jobs in Cumbria and North Lancashire in general psychiatry, psychogeriatrics and child and adolescent psychiatry until he finally stopped in 1995. He had increasing health problems over the last 2 years of his life but made no fuss about them and led a life of activity to the edge of tolerance.

He met his wife Mira when they were both in their teens and their marriage was the envy of their friends. In addition, he leaves four charming and successful daughters who inevitably include a social worker and a doctor.