Charles Garrett Phillips, 13 October 1916 - 9 September 1994

Abstract

Charles Garrett Phillips was born in London on 13 October 1916, the eldest of four children, having one brother and twin sisters. His own comment on his categorically medical ancestry and distinguished family traditions reads: ‘My grandfather, George Arthur Phillips, J.P (1850-1921), was a Surgeon of Walsall, Staffordshire, and my great-grandfather, George Marshall Phillips (1819-1904), was Surgeon of Whitwell, Hertfordshire.’ Charles’s father, George Ramsay Phillips, F.F.A., R.C.S. (1880-1953), was Senior Anaesthetist to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, London W2, a position from which he retired in 1948. His mother, Flora Phillips, née Green (1886-1956), had been a nurse at St George’s Hospital, then at Hyde Park Corner. At the age of 29, she married George Ramsay Phillips who had been Resident Anaesthetist at that hospital. Flora was the youngest of six children who were brought up on a farm in Kent. Her mother died when she was 18 and her father soon afterwards. She was helped by family friends in London, trained as a nurse at St George’s and became a ward sister at that hospital. After her marriage she worked at the Victoria Hospital for Children in Chelsea and, in 1939, became a matron at Bradfield College. Charles Phillips was proud of his medical family tree. His great-grandfather and his grandfather had both qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, as had his father’s brother, Alfred Percy Phillips (1881-1961). His grandfather’s brother, Percy Cranston Phillips (1869-1946), had graduated from St Thomas’s Hospital and practised in Putney, London, as a general practitioner, while George Ramsay Phillips, his father, had qualified at Guy’s Hospital and served in the R.A.M.C. in World War I.