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Dr Catherine Hay Aitken |
Dr Catherine, the Angel of Highgate
THE death of Dr Catherine Aitken in a Highgate nursing home on August 1 has robbed the north London community, in which she spent most of her professional life, of a remarkable doctor and an exceptionally warm and dedicated woman.
Very few in our heavily burdened medical profession can have been more universally loved and appreciated: there are patients of Dr Catherine (as she was widely known in the Highgate, Islington and north London area) who called her ‘The Angel of Highgate’ – though she was far too modest ever to tolerate such an accolade.
Yet that was how many patients, notably young mothers attending her famed baby clinic in the area would choose to describe Catherine Aitken.
Indeed that was precisely how she was described by my own daughter after Dr Catherine helped nurse her first child and my first grandchild, Rebecca, who is now a mother herself.
Generations of young mothers and their children felt the same as Dr Catherine’s reputation spread. At first she was a local authority medical officer in the Highgate, Hornsey and Islington area, then as a GP covering schools as well as a remarkable baby clinic.
Later she specialised as a dermatologist at the Whittington and North Middlesex Hospitals where she was immensely respected by her peers.
Catherine was wholly devoted to the National Health Service and was a personal friend of its founder, Aneurin Bevan.
She qualified as a doctor from Edinburgh University medical school the year Bevan launched the NHS – 1948. The NHS was her lifelong commitment – apart from bringing up two daughters, Susie and Bookie and looking after her husband Ian Aitken, the distinguished political journalist formerly with The Guardian after a spell with the Beaverbook Daily Express.
Catherine Hay Aitken was born on December 14, 1922 the youngest of six children from an Aberdeenshire farming household.
Her father, Maitland Mackie was a well known, highly regarded and successful Aberdeenshire agriculturist whose three sons followed in his footsteps.
Maitland Mackie set up his three sons with farms of their own and each became successful agricultural experts.
Catherine broke with that tradition and chose medicine starting at Aberdeen University before graduating in Edinburgh.
She first met Ian Aitken in 1951 when, as a GP, she attended his parents in their Highgate home. For him it was love at first sight – though it took another five years for Ian to persuade her to marry.
The wedding took place in 1956, in the midst of the Suez crisis, at Catherine’s family farmhouse home in Aberdeenshire.
Her death, aged 83, came three months before they were to celebrate their golden wedding.
But Catherine had suffered from Alzheimers for a number of years and finally died in Highgate Nursing Home after a bout of acute pneumonia. The funeral was held at St Michael’s Church, in Highgate Village, on August 9 attended by many of her former patients, colleagues and close friends including the former leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot.
Catherine was a long standing stalwart member of the Highgate (and Hornsey) Labour Party and among the mourners at her funeral was Barbara Roche the former MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. There will be a Memorial Service in the autumn.
GEOFFREY GOODMAN |
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