Lubbock Grant

The establishment of the bursary which was first awarded to a first year medical student in the first year of the University of East Anglia’s new medical school in 2002/3, resulted from comments made by Barry Ross Esq. FRCS, a Past President, at the AGM held at Felbrigg Hall in June 1999: he raised the question of appropriate use of The Society’s surplus income, and subsequently suggested in a letter to The President in August, that a bursary for Specialist Registrars might be appropriate. At a later Council meeting in October, the idea of a bursary was discussed, but for an impecunious medical student at the proposed new medical school.

This solution had been suggested by Annabella Rundle, wife of the President, who as a high-school science teacher and mother of two university students, was well aware of the financial problems of such students which had resulted from the abolition of the state funded student grant system.

The proposal to award such a bursary of £1500 annually was finally adopted by Council in January 2000, and Council member Professor Ian Harvey was delegated to discuss the matter with his University colleagues. Subsequently a sub-committee of three was appointed in October to implement the establishment of the bursary and the first award was made to Natalie January in May 2003, towards the end of the first academic year of the new medical school.

The title of the bursary was the 1999/2000 President’s idea: there had been a medical students’ society at the hospital from 1858-1862, named after its founder Richard Girdleston Lubbock, a grandson of Dr Richard Lubbock (1759-1808) one of the early Physicians to the first Norfolk & Norwich Hospital. At its demise the Lubbock Society donated the minutes of its meetings to the Medico-Chirurgical Society and they are preserved to this day in the Society’s archives.

One of the members of the Lubbock Society, Shepherd T Taylor, wrote ‘The Diary of a Norwich Medical Student’, published by Jarrolds in 1930, which tells of the exploits of the medical students and their mentors during the time of the Lubbock Society. There is a copy of this book in the Sir Thomas Browne library, and the President 1999/2000 has a copy donated to him by the 97 year old daughter Dr Evelyn Kempsford Brown, one of his predecessors in the Ludham Practice from 1918-39. She had met Shepherd Taylor in her youth – he was related to her father by marriage and lived as a boy in the practice area at Dilham Hall, site of the Islands Garden, a once famous, but now derelict Victorian water garden.

Robert J.T. Jarvis, President 1999/2000 Norwich Medico-Chirurgical Society

References

1.  ‘The Norwich Medico-Chirurgical Society’ A. Batty Shaw 1967 – published by the society.
2.  ‘The Diary of a Norwich Medical Student, 1850-1862’ Shepherd T Taylor MB Jarrolds 1930.
3.  ‘How did the Devil come?’ Presidential Address June 2000 (Med-Chi minutes).
4.  ‘Norfolk & Norwich Medicine’ A. Batty Shaw, published by the Society 1992.
5.  Catalogue of an exhibition to depict the history of the hospital over 200 years held in the Castle Museum 4th September-3rd October 1971, published by N&N Hospital 1971.
6.  Relevant dated minutes of the Norwich Medico-Chirurgical Society.