Wilhelmina Lockwood obituary The Guardian Other Lives Wed June 14 2017

My mother, Wilhelmina Lockwood, who has died aged 92, was a doctor who survived Japanese internment and then made a life for herself in rural England.

She was born a twin in Indonesia to a Dutch father, Cornelius Pieter Mom, a water engineer, and his wife, Johanna (nee Breyer). A happy childhood came to an end when, aged 18, with her mother and sister, Margareta, she was sent to a concentration camp, and interned from 1942 to 1945; her father was sent to a different camp. Their Red Cross parcels were not delivered, the guards abused them, and she almost died from malnutrition and infections. Later, she said that the atomic bomb, and consequent Japanese surrender, saved her life.  

After the second world war ended she studied medicine at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. She met my father, David Lockwood, who trained in theology in Birmingham, in a youth hostel in Heidelberg in 1950; she was hitchhiking through Germany and he was cycling to Oberammergau – that evening he skipped his prayers to chat her up.

They married in 1954 and moved to Britain, where her medical degree was not recognised, so she did her final year again Birmingham University and qualified through conjoint exams. After junior doctor jobs in hospitals in Kidderminster and Worcester, she became a GP.

For many years she combined the roles of vicar’s wife and doctor, doing rural visits, treating people and delivering babies while also raising four children. She worked in rural general practice until she retired in 1990.

She made sure her family retained close links with the Netherlands, with regular trips back on the night boat from Harwich to the Hague. Her Dutch accent became stronger as she aged.

My parents retired to the village of Llowes, on the Welsh borders, in 1982. They created a beautiful house and garden, entertained many people and supported the Hay festival from its beginning.

My mother was a keen photographer and wrote a daily diary for 35 years. She was stylish, and proud of sharing her hat-maker with the Queen. She took the Guardian every day and enjoyed the theatre and Welsh National Opera.

Her experience in the concentration camp moulded her outlook and she dealt with that trauma by not talking about it initially and only briefly in later life. Being a Christian and active church member helped her cope with the sadness of losing two daughters, my sisters Henny and Laura, in 1972 and 2009.

Her brave spirit enabled her to rise above adversity, engaging with people and bringing out the best in them.

David died in 2005. She is survived by her children, Peter and me, and two grandchildren. Margareta died in 2001.

Deeds not Words Recreating the suffragette surgeons of World War One

DIGITAL DRAMA

www.digitaldrama.org

I played the suffragette pathologist Helen Chambers in an immersive drama  recreating the all female hospital that cared for wounded soldiers during the First World War.  Endell Street hospital was set up in 1915 and lead by Louisa Garret Anderson and had female doctors, nurses, porters and laboratory staff. We recreated this hospital in The Swiss church, Covent Garden, London.  The audience experienced 40 minutes of the life of the hospital and were walked round the different parts of the hospital.  In 1915 The War Office saw that eminent women doctors were going to France to work in hospitals so to keep these skills in the UK they asked Louisa Anderson to lead an all women’s hospital. This unique experiment demonstrated that women could run a hospital.

Being part of a creative process was fascinating for me.  In our first sessions we identified characters and I imagined being a young nurse working but also being in love.  I talked about the daily rhythms of a hospital with the patients having ward rounds in the mornings and medicines being given in the afternoon.  Visitors came in the afternoon. When we practised stretcher carrying I emphasised that these are heavy and the team needed a leader to give instructions.  I talked about the smells of being in hospital, blood, vomit, people and showed people how to bandage and inspect limbs.

The play imagined a War office inspection in different locations, the entrance, the linen room, a pathology laboratory in a corridor, the office and the ward.  My lab was in the corridor of the hospital because they were so short of space.  I had three young nurse assistants. Infection was a major problem then, so I looked down an old microscope looking for bacteria on the slides.  My assistants recorded the results and washed the slides. I had glass tubes with colorful urine specimens and I discussed the pathologies that these might represent.  The play then moved to the ward, here the soldiers were sitting in different groups. I joined one group who were playing cards and trying to avoid having their bandages changed.  When the nurses were giving out the medicines on the ward round I showed them the correct way to do this, giving tablets to the soldiers.  The ward scene captured the different experiences of the soldiers and the audience heard different versions, depending on which bed they were around. One young man was very depressed and nihilistic, another was discovered to be two timing his girlfriend in a rather dramatic revelation.

We ended the play standing under the wall on which were projected scenes for the hospital capturing the letters that the women wrote from there, the recollections of the male patients and photos.  We marched out singing the suffragette anthem.  The space of the Swiss church was perfectly suited to our play. The church has been stripped down to a large space with light pouring in from high windows. The past provenance of the church can be guessed from the plaques that are still on the walls. 

I enjoyed the team work with young actors most of whom left drama school recently. The five older established actors brought their expertise and different styles to the production. There are many other people who support the production, the costumes team were keen to get details right. The research work included a film being made about the suffragette hospital and this also deepened the experience.  We were photographed by a professional photographer during the rehearsals.  I was surprised at how much I identified with Helen Chambers, my character and found it moving to read her obituary in the British Medical Journal.   She does not speak in the play and her obituary mentions how she disliked speaking. She did important work on the treatment of infections and then cervical cancer. As a woman doctor she wa s clearly picking up on topical female problems in her career. It was also moving to be recreating the work that the suffragette surgeons had done.  

So my first venture into acting was close to home, recreating a hospital pathologist and for a piece of history relating to both the first world war and the development of women’s rights.

Obituary Helen Chambers 1953 234-5

Deeds Not Words.  Writer Liz Rigby, Director Kate Valentine ,Producer Alison Ramsey.

http://www.digitaldrama.org/deeds-not-words-history/

Art, Demonitisation, Life and Death in India Jan 2017

In India I enjoyed the work of Jitish Kallat and experienced Hindu and Christian death ceremonies for friends.

Delhi was chilly and foggy and I had to keep my fleece on most of the time. I stayed with jasjit in Haus Khaz. The house is now up for sale so this might have been my last visit there.  On Saturday evening I went with Kris and her son Arnav to the opening of a major exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art. The exhibition was of work by Niitsh Killat a Mumbai based artist. He is interested in natural cycles of life and death, Indian food and environment. One of the most impressive works was a depiction of his father’s lunar calendar from birth to death with the moons represented with chapattis that were either full of half eaten to symbolize the waxing and waning of the moon done as photos. In other pics he captured the Indian environment and made an auto-rickshaw skeleton out of animal bones. He also had two stories about 1 rupees, one in black font about a desperately poor girl in West Bengal committing suicide because her mother did not have one rupee to give her for school food, in white font was a parallel tale by a telecoms company linking callers in different states for just one rupee. In another piece he used a series of 20 figures to capture the experience of going through a security check. There was a wonderful uninhibited energy and reinterpreting of the environment. Kris is a sculptor and was greeted warmly by several artists and by the many Delhi gallery owners at the exhibition. However her time for art is severely affected because she has a full time teaching job and a frail mother with dementia living at home; so she just promised pieces for future joint shows. Her son Arnav came to stay in Bevan st  about 10 yrs. ago , he is now 17 and young giant who wants to do geophysics. He was bright and interested in the art, which we all enjoyed.  The next day I went to a fascinating exhibition called past Time in Bikaner House which explored themes around memory, loss and partition. There were some fascinating sculptures, one of a twisting series of old film looped between two points, the top about 15 feet above the bottom.  it twisted like a knot of hair One of the most striking pieces was an ipad that had been loaded with text and digital images of people and places in either india or Pakistan. It conveyed the horrors of partition and one saw people aging in the process. There is no museum of partition even through the event involved 14 million people relocating and maybe 500000 dying.   It captured the sense of loss very eloquently.

I spent 3 days at the ENLIST meeting. We are making good progress with the protocol needed for the two trials on using Methotrexate to treat patients with ENL.  Our consortium has 8 partners of whom probably 7 will be involved in the trial, so our meeting included people from Ethiopia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal.  The meeting was hosted by the Indians and TLMI. Joydeepa was an excellent host and we stayed in a hotel close to the airport. The hotel had a grand marble staircase and beds with elaborate wooden headboards. But one could not charge electronic items overnight and we nearly had a disaster with over loaded plugs in our meeting room. We also had a trip out to the local mall called Ambience which was full of foreign brands, I could have stocked up in Marks and Spencer here in Delhi! I enjoyed browsing though a large Fab India outlet there. But Joy commented that the prices were too high for ordinary `Indians.  We had a fine Keralan meal for the group in the mall with excellent spicy prawns and fish curry.

I then went on to Hyderabad to visit the Blue peter clinic because we have a new head, Aparna who took over a few months ago.  Here I joined another consortium meeting but this time for Indian NGOs working on leprosy.  A group of research active Indian centres are joining together to do some joint work. Good to see. I stayed in another nice hotel and I had a good view out over the old part of Hyderabad.  However in this hotel the lift was not working one day and so i went down the fire staircase I found it locked between the 3 and 4 floors as a “security precaution”.  When I raised this with the managers they only dimmed perceived that it might be a problem in a fire or that they might be breaking the law. To my amazement the lock was put back on the next day.

When I was in Delhi I went to Indira Naths house to celebrate the first anniversary of her husband death.  This took place at home with a local pandit.  He lit a small fire in the living room with small pieces of sandal wood. We sat around and put herbs on the fire, the flames then shot up when he poured oil on the fire.  We passed a brass plate with an oil light and marigolds on it round and chanted.  About 20 people were there, mainly friends, their daughter is in Oxford. After the ceremony we eat typical Delhi food of okra, potatoes, dahl and fresh poori. I felt privileged to be there and to be part of the ceremony.  Death arrived again in Hyderabad; I had arranged to have supper with my friend Sujai with whom I have cooperated over 25 yrs. I knew that he was nursing his very frail elderly mother at home. I arrived to find that she had died and her corpse was in the centre of the room in a glass-lidded coffin. Decorated with wreaths.  Sujai’s sisters had come down and many friends and relatives from their Christian Church were there. He and I went upstairs and chatted whilst various funeral arrangements were put into place. it was strange to have different deaths at the beginiing and end of my stay. I had been supposed to fly back to London on Sunday but had to defer by a day, There must have been something in the air that made me stay an extra day. I was v touched to be part of the family that evening.     

I also experienced the effects of demonization. This measure was introduced by the modi governemt last November.  They made the old Rs 500 and 1000 illegal. People were able to bring notes in and change them. The aim of demonitisation is to move Indian towards being a cashless economy, reduce corruption, black money, counterfeiting and terrorism finance.  However there has been a severe shortage of the new Rs 2000 and RS 500 notes. People were also only able to take RS 2000 per day out of their bank accounts.  There has also been a sever shortage of notes. SO people queued for hours at ATMs and often came away empty handed.  The NGO who were hosting us offered to change money for us.  My friends have problems running their households.  The people who have been hits worst are the cash labourers and there has been a 40-50 job loss in small and medium enterprises.  People were able to pay larger amounts using etransactions.  But using pay tM which is the governments favoured operator attracts a transaction fee of 2.5%.  Just before New year the amount of money that one could take out was increased to RS 4200 per day. I think the economy will take a hit for the last two quarters, I suspect that people such as women and daily labourers will be most effected since they have no cushions for actions like these. It might have some good effects, it might reduce the lavish weddings that have become the normal in India. The government is already claiming that It has already reduced violence in Kashmir.  Tourists are also suffering, Steve tried several cashpoints all empty. 

I used uber cabs to travel round Delhi, there are now 5000 drivers and one feels much safer with details about the driver and being able to monitor travel. They are also much cheaper, but  they are also contributing to the congestion on the Delhi roads. And the drivers have to drive long hours to earn enough in the day.

Japan: leprosaria, fine art and futuristic architecture

I had a week in Japan, at meetings in Tokyo and Yokohama. In Tokyo I visited the Hansen’s museum and witnessed the tale of the survivors.  I enjoyed the art galleries in Tokyo, Yokohama is a thriving outward looking port.

When I knew I was going to be in Tokyo I contacted Kay Yamaguchi who is a leprosy advocate and human rights activist and asked her to take me to the Hansen’ s museum in Tokyo. We travelled on the Metro to west Tokyo to see the one of the 13 remaining Japanese leprosaria and containing the leprosy museum. ( National Sanatorium Tama Zensho-en The leprosy museum is a new modern building set in a wood. Outside is a sculpture of a leprosy patients and child seeking help, wearing bamboo hats. I chatted to an ex patient, now in his late 80’s, he had come into the leprosaria in the 1950's and had worked making bamboo. He had single facial patch and had later developed facial changes and developed severe deformities after treatment. He described becoming a leader for patient rights and travelling to Europe in the 1980's. He was away that afternoon to be the prize giver at a local school sports day, such is the change in his status from compulsory patient to celebrity. I was touched hearing his tale of struggling to get rights for leprosy patients. The Japanese government acknowledged in 1998 that the Leprosy patients should not have been in the leprosaria and agreed that patients would have life long provision there. They also promised to set up a museum chronicling the history of the museum. The museum has about 10 different sections chronicling different aspects of life in the leprosaria. The leprosaria were established in 1905 when searching for patients were actively searched for and putting  there seems to have peaked in the 1930 but continued until the 19070's.  Patients were detained against their wishes. They were given a uniform and made to work at trades and in the farm. If they got married they were sterilised even though leprosy was known to be an infectious disease. There was also a prison for offenders, the offence was determined by the governor of the leprosaria. The themes of the survival were explored; some patients produced fine art work, there were journals to which that the patients contributed. In the final section there was information about the current state of leprosy in the world. The museum was beautifully put together with nice photos and material. However it is very limited appeal for outsiders because there is very little translation and the curator, although being passionate about his collection he does not speak English. I don't think he appreciated how important it is to make this work accessible. Kay was an impassioned translator, talking about how the patients survived and were v creative.  We then walked through the leprosarium, some of the old bungalows are still inhabited.  The bungalows were single story with verandahs and small gardens. Many of the patients are now geriatric. We visited a ward where people were living in their own rooms, the man here had made ceramics to represent the leprosy patients and of a harmonica band he played in. He had married and left the leprosaria but had now returned because his wife had died. We also visited another former patients leader who is bed bound and frail. There were lots of nurses around and the facility seemed well staffed and provided.  It was a fascinating exploration of the loss of human rights and the fight to preserve their struggle. The leprosarium is also a large building with forest around it. We had lunch in the canteen, bowls of rice and seafood with vegetables and green tea.  I enjoyed the journey out and back with Kay, she speaks good English and has a social scientists’ perspective on life. I felt that I was touching history by seeing the leprosarium and meeting the last patients. They still have 1239 patients in leprosaria across Japan. At the height of the leprosaria there were 12 000 in patients in the 1930's. 

Tokyo felt a very full on city, the bars and neon lights were glaring all night long. I walked around the Akasaka area which has many civic buildings, the law courts, the national theatre, the parliament. These were some of the oldest buildings that I saw and they dated from the 1930’s. This is partly because of the huge earthquake in the 1923 that destroyed the city. I saw that buildings are constantly being torn down and rebuilt in the newest, most modern style.  The national gallery has a fabulous survey of the highlights of Japanese art starting with ancient wooden bhuddas and ancient ceramics, taking in painted screens and calligraphy.  I enjoyed a beautiful exhibition of the painter Suzuki Kiitsu’s work at the Mid Town Gallery. He worked in the late 18c and painted elegant herons, but also sheets of blue morning glory flowers against a gold background. The designer shops in the malls are very elegant, many with beautiful ceramics or designer goods. Simplicity and elegance were evident.

I enjoyed Japanese food and eating small amounts of highly tasty food. I had an excellent meal in a lunchtime spot in Tokyo with highly spiced pickles and vegetables as a starter, followed by grilled mackerel, washed down with miso soup and rounded off with some noodles.  We went to the Tsukiji fish market, the fish are laid out in repeating rows.  I ate seaweed soup and smoked squid. Nora, Vai and Paul and I had an excellent sushi meal here. In Yokohama Nora and I ate beautiful crisp tempura in a simple restaurant. Another restaurant specialised in noodles and one had 8 bowls each containing a small amount of thick udon noodles.

The world pain conference was held in Yokohama in is a vast new gleaming congress centre.  My student Nora had a poster on pain in leprosy patients in Indonesia.  She printed it on silk in London and so it folds up small, tradition meet advanced technology, but I was amused to take silk to Japan. Most of our questioners were surprised that leprosy is still a problem. Later on Andrew Rice gave a talk on our leprosy neuropathic pain work.

In Yokohama I enjoyed the port museum traced the port history from its foundation in the 1860's after the American Commander Perry's visit to its current form as a massive container port.  The material was well explained with good photos. I saw the establishment of the different sea routes. In the 1920's many poor people left Japan to work in the US, then was the era of the huge cruise liners and passenger ships. The port was badly bombed during the war and then occupied by the US forces, in the 1950's the port rebuilt and then adopted container technology.   The exports changed from silk to cars. Port life creates a more open outward looking society and Yokohama has the largest China town outside China.

I enjoyed seeing the modern architecture in Japan but I also felt that the cities were constantly being rebuilt for the sake of it rather than conserving what one has.  I was impressed by the stylish shopping malls with elegant designer shops.

Society is very orderly and pubic transport was excellent.  I felt that with the constant rebuilding and consumption there was little time for reflection. I experienced v little contemplation. I visited one of the main temples in Tokyo the senso-ji temple on Sat and it was very very noisy, only on my early morning visit to a temple the day I left did I experience some spirituality.

On my next visit I hope to visit rural japan and Kyoto to enjoy the rural areas and mountain walks.

After my visit I picked up the book The Samurai’s garden by Gail Tsukiyama. This book is a powerful novel set in 1938  and describing how a young man is suspected of having TB. He is sent to a remote village to recover and here encounters a silent gardener. The gardener rescued a young woman twenty years earlier when she was about to commit suicide on finding that she had leprosy. The gardener takes her to the leprosy village but looks after her. It is a superb coming of age book and the boy learns to appreciate people’s deeper values that go beyond the superficial appearances of leprosy. I had been given the book in 2004 when I visited the US. Reading it now I thoroughly enjoyed the Japanese references to leprosy food, gardens and growing up.  The book had clearly been waiting for my post Japan enthusiasm.

The Samurai’s garden

Gail Tsukiyama

St Martin’s Griffin, New York

1994

Diana Lockwood Nov 2016

Beijing 2016 the 19th International Leprosy Congress

New slogans for leprosy and a personal media black out for delegates.
Sept 2016

The International Leprosy Conference is held every 3- 4 yrs. The conference was held in the modern Beijing International conference centre and about 900 Chinese delegates and 500 from other parts of the world attended. This meeting was important to the Chinese leprosy programme and the vice president came to our opening ceremony. There was a parallel conference going on for the Chinese delegates. The slogan for the conference was “Unfinished business”. We were also given very study purple rucksacks to go out and finish the business of leprosy.

This was an important meeting for me presenting research that we have done recently and my group were involved with 17 presentations and one poster. It is also an important opportunity to discuss ongoing leprosy research with others. We also had a meeting of our global consortium to study ENL ENLIST pre meeting. We are making significant progress with this project and it was good to meet up with the group pre-conference. During the conference we had several opportunities to present the data from the ENLIST studies which are being lead by Steve Walker. The new Global Leprosy Strategy was also presented and has three pillars of zero transmission, preventing disability, and promoting inclusion and removing discrimination against leprosy patients. These were then confected into a slogan, “the triple zero” which sounds plausible but actually is unachievable. One of the highlights was a session right at the end of the conference showing how leprosy affected people should be involved in research and planning at all levels. Our group also had an achievement when my recent PhD student Edessa won the prize for the best clinical leprosy poster.

Before the conference started I meet Xiamen, a Chinese leprosy scientist who worked in London with Hazel Dockrell and with whom I travelled to different parts of the leprosy programme in China in 2009, she has now retired. Her son is a well-paid patent lawyer. We went to explore The Hutongs which are crowded areas around the Forbidden City in Beijing, where people lived and worked. They have now been revamped and are full of trendy shops and eateries. We visited a Taoist temple showing an exhibition capturing old Beijing. The drawings illustrated the work of the intellectuals who had lived there, one committed suicide in the Cultural Revolution. The pen and ink drawings captured a past world beautifully. We walked around Huhai Lake where many other people were out enjoying themselves. We took a boat taxi across the lake to the central temple. We paused for supper there, eating at a tiny street restaurant and had cold dishes of vegetables, stuffed buns and pastry wrapped prawns. We climbed up to the temple overlooking the Forbidden City and sat at the top looking over the Forbidden City. It was a fine view but I found it quite disturbing; The Forbidden City looks so separate and excluding and I felt for the peasants who were excluded. It does not surprise me that there was a revolution. As we gazed out over the view waiting for sunset I was hit by jet lag and fell asleep so we took a taxi back to the hotel.

I was in China such a short time that I did not experience enough of the non tourist/ conference side of the country. It seems far more developed than when I visited in 2009. The streets seem much cleaner, fewer bikes around especially in the tourist areas. I sensed that people were not free. I did not spend enough time with anyone to really get a true feeling about the country. I sensed the control of the media, no one was able to access their Gmail accounts and I was not able to access my doctors.net account although I could access my London school (LSHTM, my academic account) one for reading but not sending messages. When I visited in 2000 I linked up with Billy who was running an HIV awareness programme in S China, he was a very helpful way into Chinese society. Similarly when I visited in 2009 travelling with Xiamon gave me local insights.

This was an interesting useful conference, and I enjoyed being in China again. Next time I need to have more time to explore.