Short abstract
Surgeon-gynaecologist to the Queen who talked the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists into supporting the legalisation of abortion
Sir John Peel steered the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists through the intense debates that led to it supporting abortion law reform in 1967. He also wrote the report that engineered the move of childbirth from home and into hospital. Peel attended six royal births, all of which took place at home, and he made childbirth safe for women with diabetes and their babies.
Figure 1.
Credit: EDWARD HALLIDAY/RCOG
It was during his tenure as president of the royal college that Peel chaired the committee advising the government on its bill to legalise abortion, which became the 1967 Abortion Act. The college was closely involved with the government at all stages of the bill.
The abortion debate was marked by deep divisions along religious, moral, and ethical lines, and the college was no exception to this. Its council included a prominent antiabortionist, Professor Hugh Maclaren, and several Roman Catholics, who objected on religious grounds.
Peel steered the committee through this with great diplomacy and, according to his colleague John Brudenell, he talked the council round so that it came out in support of the bill. His aim was singular and focused: he wanted to reduce the amount of disease and death associated with illegal abortion.
Peel was the author of a 1971 report on domiciliary midwifery bed needs for the Department of Health and Social Security that recommended that all women should give birth in a hospital and remain there for some days. Peel's aim was to reduce maternal and infant mortality. Although this met with some resistance (many experts felt that the additional stress placed upon bed requirements was not balanced by the benefits of such care), the report caused a U turn in maternity practices, at the expense of domiciliary midwifery services.
The report was, however, criticised by the epidemiologist Archie Cochrane, who pointed out that there was little correlation between high hospitalisation rates and lower perinatal mortality. He asked what benefit was to be gained by keeping mothers in hospital for more than 48 hours. Cochrane said that Peel's data was thin evidence on which to base a demand for maternity beds and that the wishes of the mothers themselves seemed to have been dealt with “rather cavalierly.”
Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, John Peel was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, and King's College Hospital Medical School, London, qualifying in 1930. He passed his FRCS examination three years later. Peel remained at King's all his working life, and was appointed consultant surgeon there in 1936, retiring in 1969 but staying on as consulting surgeon.
From 1937 to 1965 he was also a consultant at the Princess Beatrice Hospital in London. He was director of clinical studies at King's College Hospital Medical School from 1948 to 1967, held many visiting professorships, and was examiner at a dozen UK universities.
With Wilfred Oakley, the diabetologist at King's, he researched the management of women with diabetes, and his innovations greatly reduced maternal and infant mortality. He raised money to build a research block at King's.
Peel became a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in 1944. In 1955 he became a council member and, in 1959, honorary treasurer. As treasurer, Peel raised the funds that financed the college's expansion into its handsome premises in Regent's Park. He became president of the college in 1966. From 1972 to 1976 he was chairman of the BMA board of science and education and in 1970 he was BMA president. He was also chairman of the Family Planning Association from 1971 to 1974. This was not an active post, but he did it to lend his name and thus his support to the organisation.
He wrote many articles and a number of books from the Textbook of Gynaecology (1943) to Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 1929-1969 (1976).
Peel assisted at the birth of Prince Charles in 1948 and Princess Anne in 1950, both of which were supervised by his predecessor as surgeon-gynaecologist, Sir William Gilliatt. He delivered Prince Andrew in 1960 and Prince Edward in 1964; on those occasions he was assisted by John Brudenell. All these, paradoxically, were home births. As surgeon-gynaecologist to the Queen from 1961 to 1973 he also delivered Princess Margaret's children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. A quiet, unflappable Yorkshireman, Peel handled the media interest in royal births with aplomb.
He married Muriel Pellow in 1936. In 1947, while consultant surgeon at the Princess Beatrice Hospital, he scandalised his conservative colleagues by divorcing her and marrying Freda Mellish, a ward sister. Theirs was a long and happy relationship and he was overcome by her death in 1993. In 1995 Peel married an old family friend, Sally Barton, who was also recently widowed. He leaves her and a daughter by his first marriage.
Sir John Harold Peel, former consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist London (b 1904; q King's College London 1930; KCVO), d 31 December 2005.