John Bostock was born in 1893 in Glasgow, graduating in 1913 from the London Hospital. It was the year of the outbreak of World War I, and he left his position as house-physician (at the London Hospital) to enlist in the Royal Navy on 4 August 1914, with the rank of temporary surgeon, Royal Navy. He served in that capacity and subsequently at Gallipoli as a naval surgeon with a naval field ambulance, which was based on the shore. John recalls that he was the only member of the naval field ambulance who was able to ride a horse. He recalls that whilst mounted on one occasion, the horse bolted from him and headed straight for the Turkish lines, and it was only at the last moment that he prevented himself being delivered literally into the hands of the enemy.

When the armistice was signed in 1918, he left the Royal Navy and undertook training in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital in London, and received his Diploma in Psychological Medicine from that institution. He emigrated to Australia in 1922 and was appointed as a medical officer to the Fremantle Mental Hospital for that year. He subsequently went to Sydney and in 1923 was appointed senior medical officer at Callan Park Mental Hospital. In 1925 he was appointed deputy director, and served that hospital for a total of four years. In 1926 he was appointed superintendent of Newcastle Hospital.

His interests were developing in the area of research psychiatry, and in private clinical practice in the area of child and adult psychiatry. He thus left a hospital based practice in 1927 and made his home in Brisbane where he was to work for the next sixty years. He was one of the first psychiatrists in Brisbane and was very successful in private practice, in his own words, 'paying my own way in my first year in the northern city'. In 1930 he founded 'The Brisbane Clinic' with his colleague Dr Jarvis Nye. This clinic, at 79 Wickham Terrace in Brisbane, was one of the pioneer multi-doctor practices. Built by the architect Raymond Nowland it was decorated with one of the characteristic bronze lanterns which became subsequently a hallmark for both the Brisbane Dental Hospital, and the medical school in Brisbane which were also built by the same architect.

When the medical faculty was opened in 1946 at the University of Queensland, John was one of the early clinical lecturers in psychiatry. In 1940 he was appointed formally as the first research professor of medical psychology within the department of medicine there. In his role as a research professor, John Bostock occupied a room at the old Government House building in George Street in Brisbane. He focused his attention particularly on problems in child psychiatry, and was the first children's psychiatrist in Queensland. One of his firm beliefs was that 'the time to attack mental diseases was in childhood'. He had a particular interest in breast feeding and the development of normal children, but is seen with the perspective of hindsight to have been very conservative in his views. He had a strong belief in the desirable effects of swaddling of young babies. When I interviewed him in 1985, he felt that 'a lot is still to be said for swaddling and I believe that swaddling will come back in the future'. He established the first child guidance clinic at the Hospital for Sick Children in Brisbane, in 1940, and remained in charge of that clinic for the next twenty years. He introduced the electric bell-pad-buzzer (machine) treatment for enuresis while he was at the Children's Hospital.

He set up a lecture course for the teaching of psychiatry to medical students in Queensland, and was interested in bringing together, for professional education and mutual support, all the psychiatrists in Queensland at the time. He was appointed as a foundation member of the Association of Psychiatrists (later The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists) and was their third national president. John undertook clinical research particularly in association with Professor Fred Schonell (later Professor Sir Fred Schonell) and had a particular interest in attention deficit and the drug treatment of that problem. He was chairman of the Creche and Kindergarten Association from 1935 to 1945 and was an executive of the Lady Gowrie Centre in Brisbane for many years. He was the chairman of the Lady Gowrie Centre for ten years from the mid 1960s.

He was a prolific publisher and wrote a book (with Edna Hill) The Pre-School Child and Society which was published by the University of Queensland in 1946. John Bostock was particularly well known for publishing numerous pamphlets for parents on the common problems seen in pre-adolescent and early adolescent children. Among his many publications, some of his better known pamphlets carry the titles of Smoking; How to Stand Straight and; Nerves and Worry. John Bostock himself said that 'I regard the production of these pamphlets and their use very much as part of my research activities'. He also wrote a history of psychiatry in Australia from 1788 to 1950 entitled The Dawn of Australian Psychiatry, published by the AMA in 1968.

John retired in 1962 and went to live initially at Mt Nebo in the mountains near Brisbane, and finally retired to his home at 106 Bonney Avenue, Clayfield, where he died on 26 September 1987.