Ian Alfred Horton

Dr Ian Horton was born on 13 February 1935, and spent his childhood in Worthing, where he attended the local Grammar School and where, while roaming the South Downs he developed his affection for nature, and the country-side. He trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he qualified MB.BS in 1951, and spent his 2 years’ National Service in Germany, where he acquired a love of the country and sound command of the language. He gained his MRCP(Lond) in 1956, his MRCPsych in 1971 and was elected FRCPsych in 1986.

Following his postgraduate medical experience, Ian did his psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital, but found the aggressively challenging intellectual climate at the time, uncongenial and destructive. Resisting requests to stay, he became possibly the youngest consultant then ever appointed when he took up a post at Stone Hospital, Aylesbury. He often said he was greatly influenced by Dr David Watt. In 1968, he moved to Exeter, initially covering the Torbay area, where he quickly established a reputation as a thoughtful, sensitive, kind man, committed to his patients who continue to speak warmly of him whenever one meets them.

He became interested in community psychiatry, and led a group to Dingleton Hospital, Melrose, in the 1970s the leader in the field and from there he returned very enthused. The outcome was the steady establishment of community services in the Exeter district. This in turn led to the, not universally approved, early closure of two of the large psychiatric hospitals, with devolution of services to the various parts of the extensive Devon catchment area. He became the consultant to the Tiverton Community Team, where he remained until the onset of the symptoms of his debilitating final illness. This forced his premature retirement, but not before the psychotherapy service, which he had so actively promoted, was set up.

Although well-trained in general medicine, Ian was a ‘natural’ psychiatrist, interested in people, the mind, spirituality and society. He thought a lot, he tended to agonise and is remembered as saying ‘I do wish I could be a better person’. He was brought up as a Methodist, but moved to the Anglican Church only to find that equally unsatisfying. Ultimately, he joined the Quakers, which seemed to suit his temperament admirably and with which we will join in a meeting of remembrance.

He loved music, playing the clarinet, literature, nature, walking, travelling and good conversation: it was particularly distressing that his illness, which he bore with courage and dignity, robbed him progressively of the ability to communicate. Ian played an important part in the first phase of the modernisation of the Devon psychiatric services and he will be remembered for this, as well as his kindness to both colleagues and patients, all of whom will greatly miss him. He died on 8 October 2003, and leaves his second wife Annie, four children by his first wife, Brenda, and seven grandchildren.