Although originally interested in a career in medicine, like his father before him, Joseph Erulkar became interested in psychological aspects of illness and went on to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals in the 1950s. Certain influential teachers there steered him in the direction of child and adolescent psychiatry, and he took up his first consultant post at Booth Hall Hospital, Manchester, in 1960.
In 1968 he was invited to set up a new department of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Both departments were part of the University of Manchester’s Department of Psychiatry, which meant that he played a part in the specialist training of a long succession of future consultants in the subspeciality. Although, by nature shy and self-effacing, he was a charismatic and much respected teacher/trainer, and many of his former trainees kept in touch until he died.
He retired in 1983 but continued working in an honorary capacity and in providing medicolegal assessments until well into his 70s.
Predeceased by his wife, Hazel, in 1974, for nearly 30 years he shared a home with his former colleague and friend Dr Pat Ainsworth and her family, moving with them to Lancaster in 1991.
Former consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital (b Bombay 1917; q Newcastle 1943; FRCP, FRCPsych, DCH), died from myocardial fibrosis on 21 February 2008.