Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll - Memoir of a Police Doctor

Wesley Boff

Description

I can claim to have enjoyed a satisfying and fulfilling medical career. British General Practice was the jewel in the NHS crown and I was a Family Doctor during its heyday before the Government decided to take control and tell the doctors how to do their job, demoralize the profession and seriously compromise patient care, destroying the respect between patients and their doctors and turning a vocation into a chore. I was fortunate that I began my career at the right time and got out at the right time. My almost thirty years working with the local police force was hard work but once I'd seen a few corpses and gained the respect of the local constabulary I enjoyed the work immensely even if I was so often denied a good night's sleep. The case load varied from the gruesome to the amusing but looking back it was never boring.Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll - Memoir of a Police Doctor is an account of my experience as a Forensic Physician - a facet of the rich tapestry of medical practice that Joe Public never realized existed.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398468894
• Langue: English

Extrait

S ex, D rugs and R ock ‘n’ R oll – M emoir of a P olice D octor
Wesley Boff
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll – Memoir of a Police Doctor About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Prologue: Halloween—1980 something Chapter One: My Vocation Chapter Two: Medical School Chapter Three: Hospital Doctor Chapter Four: General Practice Chapter Five: The Police Come Calling Chapter Six: Some Facts and Figures Chapter Seven: Practising Medicine in the Cells Chapter Eight: Dead Bodies Chapter Nine: Sex Chapter Ten: Driving Under the Influence Chapter Eleven: The Good, the Mad and the Ugly Chapter Twelve: Drugs Chapter Thirteen: Playing Away Chapter Fourteen: Epilogue, AKA Soapbox
About the Author
Wesley Boff is the pseudonym of Dr Terry Moore. He spent his medical career in South Yorkshire working as a family doctor and for almost thirty years, he contracted to provide forensic physician services to his local police force. He lives in Florida.
Dedication
To my late wife, Susan; and my daughters, Katie and Sophie.
They had to put up with a lot.
Copyright Information ©
Wesley Boff 2022
The right of Wesley Boff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398467729 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398468894 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
I am indebted to the constables, sergeants, and inspectors and especially the Custody Sergeants of South Yorkshire Police. Between us, for twenty-seven years we did a difficult and thankless job without undue incident or complaint. Apart from when I was tired out or there was fog on the motorway, I enjoyed every minute.
Thanks to the makers of Red Bull who probably prevented my premature demise by falling asleep on the M18 after repeated nights on call.
I thank my late wife, Susan, for putting up with the arduous long hours and the nocturnal disturbances and for standing with me when certain people tried to destroy our relationship.
Thanks must go to my chemistry master, Sandy Powell, who pushed me, kicking and screaming, into a medical career and to Professor Francis James Patrick O’Gorman F.R.C.S., M.R.C.O.G., M.R.C.P. (FO’G.), who taught me to believe in myself, to work hard and to laugh. Thanks to Prof Alan Usher, the doyen of English Forensic Pathologists, for his encouragement and humour.
And lastly to my present wife, Tanya, who has brought some happiness to a tortured soul.
Prologue Halloween—1980 something
The bedside phone always clicked a second before it started to ring. When I was on call for the police, I was incapable of deep sleep, and the click woke me up before Sue was woken by the phone ringing. The police officer in the control room apologised for disturbing my slumbers but by then, I was long used to being disturbed.
“What have you got?”
“There’s a body hit by a train on the railway line near Askern. Can you attend?”
Sometimes it was easy money and sometimes it wasn’t. This decidedly was not.
A glance at the illuminated clock on the dresser showed 1:15 a.m. He gave me the location, but I didn’t pay much attention as these things were usually easy to find. Just look for half a dozen police cars and that will be the place.
“Be careful Doc. The roads are icy and the gritters haven’t been out. This cold snap has taken them by surprise.”
Sue stirred as I dressed.
“Body on the railway line,” I said, and she told me to be careful and went back to sleep. I dressed including a thick shirt and pullover and went downstairs and added a fleece-lined parka. Nobody would be expecting me to wear a collar and tie but then I didn’t usually wear a tie whether the guy was dead or alive. The control room was right about the temperature. There must have been ten degrees of frost. I sprayed the car windscreen with de-icer and set off. A journey which should have taken me twenty-five minutes at that time of night took forty-five and a couple of skids. I found the lane that ran parallel to the East Coast main line but no sign of the giveaway police cars. I spent ten minutes driving three times up and down the lane and cursing before I saw about ten police cars parked about 150 yards away over a frozen ploughed field adjacent to the railway line. No lights, no sign of life but that had to be the place. I parked the car on the grass by the side of the lane rather than risk getting stuck in the ploughed field. I walked towards the parked police cars. No sign of life-or death-apart from some intermittent flashes of light, presumably on the railway line, half a mile away to my left. Probably flashes from police photographers’ cameras. I started walking towards the lights keeping a wary eye over my shoulder for approaching trains. It was seriously cold. After ten minutes, I could see a group standing by the railway line ahead. There was a full moon. No ghosts or ghouls. At least it wasn’t raining-too cold.
Eyes wide open, hands in pockets. Thirty yards from the group I shone my torch on a strip of denim material about nine inches long, frozen to the railway line. Another fifteen yards and a neatly severed head lay between the railway lines. No doubt, the deceased had pulled the collar of his denim jacket around his neck before he put his neck on the freezing metal rail. There was the usual group of three or four detectives who stood around in these circumstances together with half a dozen uniformed officers. Only one of the detectives was dressed for the cold. He said, “Evening, Doc. We think it’s a woman from Balby.”
“Not unless she shaves,” I said, walking over to the base of the post that carried the electricity line and looking at the denim jacket that lay at the base of the post. The collar was missing but an arm was in the right sleeve. No rings, no tattoos, nothing in the pockets, no note. At the side of the track, twenty yards further down the line lay the rest of the body.
A glance confirmed the deceased was definitely male. No rings on the hands, no tattoos, no scars. Nothing in the pockets of his jeans.
“Anything else?” I said to the group of detectives.
“Yeah. Could I borrow your coat?” said one.
“No. Certified dead, for the sake of the record, at 2:25 a.m. Kid’s probably in his late teens or early 20s.”
I walked alone back along the track passing the body removers walking the other way. I said to them, “I wouldn’t want your job – not tonight anyway.” They were too cold to reply. At least they could divide the load.
I got back to the car without developing hypothermia or twisting an ankle, walking over the ploughed field, and switched on the engine and the heater and defrosted for a minute. The police were going to have to wait to identify the youth until somebody reported him missing. I drove slowly home with only one skid. I kept several self-recorded CDs in the car so that the music would keep me awake. By an unhappy coincidence, Nina Simone’s mournful voice began:
I’m gonna lay my head on some lonely railroad line,
Let the 2-19 train ease my troubled mind.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I felt morose. Sometimes this job almost got to me – almost.
I was at my surgery for my 8:30 a.m. start.
Chapter One My Vocation
It is said that a medical career is a vocation, by which is meant a calling from the Almighty.
Not for me, it wasn’t. A calling maybe, but a calling to forty years of a well-paid, safe, ever-challenging job, with a good pension at the end – it was even better as a consequence of Mr Blair’s General Practice reforms of 2004 – the respect of my fellow men, or at least most of them and at least in the early days a calling to various bars and a lot of available women. If I helped my fellow men and women, that was a bonus. If I didn’t, I’d like to think I did my best.
I was born and brought up by middle-class Methodist parents on the Wirral. I went to the local grammar school, and it is probably true to say that I distinguished myself academically, my sporting achievements being confined to the chess board and the bridge table. A sadistic gym teacher put a prepubertal me – aged twelve – in a boxing ring with a classmate who was twice as big as me. He had the build of a gorilla, had plenty of hair under his armpits and round his honeymoon tackle and was the first in the class to own a razor. In front of the class, the sadist yelled, “Why are you running away?”
“Self-preservation, sir,” I muttered.
A voice at the back said, “Because he can’t fucking fly.”
“Neesham, I heard that,” said the sadist.
The rugby field provided some sanctuary. I found that if I made myself available for the fourth XV, I could stand on the wing for the whole game and neither the ball nor anybody else came anywhere near me. The only thing I was in danger from was hypothermia.
In the sixth form, I was obviously heading for “A” grades in physics, chemistry, and biology but a week before I was due to fill in the University Application (UCCA) form, I didn’t know what I wanted to study. However, I did know that I wanted to get away from my sheltered insular home life and see more of the real world. It was, after all, the ‘swinging sixties’ and I wasn’t doing much swingi