A tribute to Susanna Isaacs-Elmhirst
A tribute to Susanna Isaacs-Elmhirst (11th April 1921 – 16th February 2010)
Educated at Dartington School, and a noted child psychiatrist, in her later life Susanna married Leonard Elmhirst. These are extracts from a tribute to Susanna read at her funeral by her son David Issacs.
Susanna always maintained that Dartington, the progressive school started by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst in the 1920’s, saved her. She went there with her beloved sister, Timmy, and with her step-siblings Ruth and Jim Obermer. At the end of their chaotic holidays they would talk about “going home to school”. Susanna was the first Dartington student to go to medical school. She went to Bristol University.
Sue was very poor at medical school and earned pocket money by reading Dickens to a blind man, the father of Bridget Edwards, a teacher from Dartington who we later adopted as our “step-grandmother”. When Sue’s money was running out and she was in danger of having to leave Bristol, she won a Rockefeller scholarship to complete her medical studies in Chicago. She travelled by convoy during World War II. Only after they arrived did she hear that a number of the boats at the end of the convoy had been sunk by U-boats.
Sue returned to Bristol to sit her Final MB. An orthopaedic surgeon asked her how she would treat osteomyelitis. “With penicillin if I could get any”, she said, having seen its early successful use in Chicago. “Rubbish, it will never catch on”, he said and failed her. Thoroughly piqued, Susanna sat the London Final MB at the Royal College of Physicians. They had no women’s toilet and had to make special arrangements, to her amusement.
Susanna loved children and studied paediatrics in London and in Sheffield under Ronald Illingworth. One day she was unwell herself and went to hospital for a blood test. A young, ham-fisted doctor made an awful mess of taking her blood. When he finally succeeded he asked, “What do you do?” When Sue replied, “I’m a paediatric senior registrar”, he fled in embarrassment. Luckily he returned to court Sue, because that was our father, Alick, who was studying influenza with Charles Stuart-Harris. He never did like clinical medicine, but science was the winner.
In 1948, Alick went to Melbourne for a year to work with Sir Macfarlane Burnet and to continue his studies of viral interference. Having decided to marry, Sue worked her way across to Australia as an assistant ship’s surgeon. Sue worked at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, and Alick and Sue were married at Melbourne Town Hall in 1949.
They returned to England, and Alick worked at Mill Hill. Susanna soon had twins, an exercise in practical paediatrics which may have been what drove her to study child psychiatry and become a psychoanalyst. She had a notable career as a child psychiatrist, running the clinic at Paddington Green and publishing influential papers on child abuse in the Lancet, the BMJ and other leading journals. She was a Fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a leading member of the British Psychoanalytical Society.
The 1960’s were grey years. Alick had a massive brain haemorrhage due to a large arteriovenous malformation deep in his brain, a second bleed killed Alick, at only 45 years of age.
Two years later, Susanna started “stepping out” with Leonard Elmhirst, whose wife Dorothy had also died. It was a joy to see them so much in love. Leonard and Dorothy had renovated Dartington Hall, started Dartington School, imported Swedish glass-blowers to teach the lost art of glass-blowing and thus start Dartington Glass, and Leonard also spent years with Rabindranath Tagore in India, and was instrumental in starting the Forestry Commission and in introducing artificial insemination into Britain. Susanna and Leonard married in 1981and moved to Los Angeles, where Susanna practised as a psychoanalyst. Sadly, Leonard died 18 months later. Sue remained working in LA for 8 years.
Susanna worked as a psychoanalyst into her late 70’s, and enjoyed doing highly valued assessments for the Coram Foundation Adoption Service. Eventually, ill health forced her to stop work and she had her first stroke. Her last years were marred by poor health and increasing dependence. Although she withdrew and lost a lot of her sparkle, she remained alert, at times feisty and preserved a wicked sense of humour.
Susanna was an extraordinary woman, who lived life to the fullest. She made a difference. She loved a lot and was greatly loved. Who could hope for a finer epitaph?
David Isaacs 25.2.10