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College Roll Bio
Williams, Morvyn
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Qualifications
MA MB BChir Cantab (1934) MRCP (1935) FRCP (1959) FRACP (1938) (Foundation) FRCP (1939) PRACP (1964-6) (Hon) FACP (1966) (Hon) FRANZCP (1966)
Born
29/01/1910
Died
15/04/1979
Tim Wiliams was born in Masterton. He was the second son of HG Williams of Lansdowne and a great grandson of Henry Williams, one of New Zealand's best known pioneer missionaries. His mother, who was Welsh, was Helen Jones before her marriage and he was related to another pioneer family in that one of his grandmothers was a Beetham.
Tim Williams was educated at Christ's College and was one of the many young New Zealanders who in those days were sent to University in England and Scotland. At Jesus College, Cambridge, he won an honours degree and entered medical training at St George's Hospital, London. In 1935 he passed his MRCP with acclamation as the youngest successful candidate for many years. Two years later he returned to Wellington to enter private specialist practice with an appointment as visiting physician to the public hospital. It was not long, however, before the War had started and he was soon in uniform. He served with the Second NZEF in the Middle East, initially as RMO and eventually as physician (lieutenant-colonel) to the 1st NZ General Hospital in Cairo. Later, he became physician to the 4th NZGH in New Caledonia. He was saved from the sea when the hospital carrier, Chakdina, was torpedoed off Bardia in December 1941. In later years his swim for life became a characteristically good story but the experience must have been a harrowing one, for many wounded men lost their lives. He remained in the Territorial Services for some years after the War, retiring with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
When hostilities ceased he returned to Wellington to both his private and his hospital practice and soon became a leading and, indeed, distinguished figure on both the local and national medical scenes. In 1938 he was the youngest of the founder fellows of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and for many years thereafter he played a leading role in the development and in the spread and scope of the influence of the new College. He served twice as chairman of the then New Zealand Committee and was a New Zealand member of the Council. For a year or more he reduced his professional work to a minimum and gave unstintingly of his time to lead the fundraising effort upon which the endowment funds of the College have been built. In 1964 he became the second New Zealander, after Sir Edward Sayers, to be honoured by being elected president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. During his term of office he travelled widely and became a welcome visitor to the councils and conferences of all the English speaking colleges. On his mantelpiece there is a superb photograph taken when he was being admitted to the honorary fellowship of the American College of Physicians. The friendly relationships which have always existed between the Australian and New Zealand sections of the College owe a great deal to both Tim's personality and to his efforts.
During the years until his retirement from Wellington Hospital in 1975 Tim remained one of the leaders of the profession in New Zealand. He served on many hospital and Health Department committees and was active in the early efforts which led eventually to the formation of both the Heart Foundation and the Arthritis Foundation. He was a member of the Medical Council and of the War Pensions Appeal Board where his term was cut short by his death. Another honorary fellowship was that of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. He was chairman in 1968 to 1969 of the Joint Committee on Medical Graduate Needs whose subsequent report (the
Williams Report
), though it met to some extent the fate of all such reports, makes astonishingly perceptive and farseeing reading to this day. Although Tim was a shrewd and knowledgeable physician, his major interest was clinical and he was an excellent bedside teacher. He was very much to the fore in the early arguments and negotiations which led eventually to the founding of the Wellington Clinical School.
Tim's interests outside medicine were wide indeed. There was a family involvement in the publishing world and he was a director and, later, chairman of Independent Newspapers and the Wellington Publishing Company. He led a successful fight to prevent an overseas takeover of the Wellington morning newspaper and thereby made enemies in the political world. He was a past president of the Wellington Club and a member of the Trustees Special Committee for the Alexander Turnbull Library. Perhaps dearest to his heart was his farm at Kumukumu in the Wairarapa through which he maintained his interest in his roots. For many years he was patron of the Wairarapa Art Centre and his friends and family commissioned a fine marble sculpture by Tanya Ashken for presentation to the centre in his memory. He was an amazingly rapid and omnivorous reader and a mine of information about early New Zealand history and its personalities.
Many are remembered more for their achievements than for themselves. For Tim it is the reverse. Although he had an outstanding record it is as a person that he made his greatest impact. He was an imposing figure physically with an impressive voice and flow of conversation and in any group he became the natural leader. He was a superb raconteur and mimic and enjoyed nothing so much as good talk about his many interests which ranged from fishing through vintage cars and music to the whole panorama of New Zealand history, its personalities and its houses. In his youth he had played in a brass band and he played the piano with enthusiasm and some skill. He had a benign and insatiable interest in people. His patients, from all walks of life, were his friends and he had the happy knack of establishing an immediate personal rapport within whatever company he might find himself. His gift for mimicry would often be applied to the foibles of his contemporaries but never to their faults or for hurt. "Tell me", he would say, stopping one in the hospital corridor, "What are they saying in the bazaars?" He never wore a wristwatch, always a Hunter in the breast pocket. He had a great love of sport based on both knowledge and experience. He had captained the Jesus fifteen and played for London Welsh and it was a delight to accompany him to a cricket or rugby match. He was a shrewd and kindly judge of people but could react quickly to pomposity, verbosity or meanness and he could be hurt although his size and bearing would conceal this.
In 1938 Tim married Phillipa, daughter of DHS Riddiford, of Longwood and from another pioneering Wairarapa family. The warmth and hospitality of their house in Wellington was known wide and far. There are four daughters, Sarah, Antonia, Charlotte and Caroline, whose careers and marriages reflect the high spirits and intellect of their father.
Author
JM TWEED
References
Munk's Roll
,
VII
, 607-8;
NZ Med J
, 1979,
90
, 116-7.
Last Updated
May 30, 2018, 17:34 PM
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