Obituary

Cyril Taylor 9 March 1921 – 11 December 2000

Dr Cyril Taylor, GP, councillor, CHC member and president of the Socialist Health Association, died peacefully after a short illness on 11 December, 2000. He was 79.

He took on his first patient in February 1950 and in 1973, when I was a medical student, I visited him in his surgery at his house in Liverpool’s Toxteth area. He was already lecturing to medical students and helping to create GP attachments for students, because he believed that it was vital to get students like me out of hospitals and into the real world.

I came to Liverpool from the London Hospital in the East End, which viewed every GP as a failure. Patents were regarded as ‘interesting cases’ and we never saw them dressed, only as ‘the liver in bed three’. I never looked back after meeting Cyril and am still a GP in Liverpool.

Cyril wrote in our practice newspaper (The Prinny Post) in 1986: ‘Both as a medical student, and later as a doctor, it had always seemed entirely appropriate for me to be part of the broad political struggle to change the unequal society for one in which every citizen would have an equal opportunity for education, the development of their talents, and the right to work for their own benefit and that of society.’

Cyril put his words into action as a councillor for Granby Ward, Toxteth, from 1964–1980. He became involved in housing issues and represented people who were being exploited by private landlords at rent tribunals.

When housing co-ops first started in London, he immediately saw the possibilities of getting people away from private landlords and into housing associations. This resulted in the formation of the Liverpool Housing Trust, one of the first major housing associations in the UK.

Cyril became chair of Liverpool City Council’s welfare committee in 1966, which later became the social services committee. His achievements included setting up the Liverpool Association for the Disabled, an organisation formed at a time when people with disabilities were very low on the council’s agenda.

In 1964 Cyril wrote in Is your GP really necessary?, a Socialist Health Association pamphlet: ‘The public have a right to expect that their own doctor is working as the leader of a team of health workers and not labouring like a one-man shopkeeper.’

He firmly believed that the primary care team must be multidisciplinary, including physiotherapists, psychologists and social workers. Cyril worked with the health authority to set up Princes Park Health Centre in 1977. He believed strongly in cooperation between social services and health – something that primary care groups are trying to achieve today – and was instrumental in attaching a social worker to the team at Princes Park.

However Cyril saw the health centre not only as a place for the primary health care team but as a neighbourhood resource. He created what I call ‘The spirit of Princes Park’ which, over the years, has included health fairs, writers’ workshops, poetry workshops, embroidery groups, poetry reading and plays. A sports project based at Princes Park was the forerunner of the ‘Exercise on Prescription’ scheme in Liverpool. Princes Park Health Centre Charity Trust, set up by Cyril, funded many of these projects partly by recycling newspaper, which Cyril helped to carry to and fro on Saturday mornings.

In April 2000 he was awarded the Duncan medal. Dr Duncan, from Liverpool, was the first Medical Officer of Health in England and the first doctor appointed specifically to look at public health issues like sanitation and housing in an English city. The Duncan medal is awarded to those who have followed in Dr Duncan’s footsteps and Cyril was truly such a person.

Although a thorough clinician and an excellent GP, Cyril’s vision of patients as whole people could sometimes be a bit stressful. When I first started at Princes Park a patient told me: ‘Last week I saw Cyril, I had a temperature of 104 degrees, I was shaking and delirious and he gave me a long lecture on housing policy.’

There is a lovely caricature of Cyril on the wall outside my room in Princes Park Health Centre. Although he has gone, when I see this painting I know that Cyril is with us every day.