Maev O’Connell was born in Cork, Ireland, the youngest of 11 children, five of whom died in infancy. She owed her early education to her father, who was a founding member of the Irish teachers’ union. She subsequently attended the St Louis School in Monaghan, where all subjects were taught through the Irish language. After medical training in Cork, Maev came to work in England in time to witness the London Blitz (from the rooftop of a hospital in Northampton). She married Bill O’Connell in 1940, and, while he was away in the army, she ran his practice on the inner city Manor estate in Sheffield for the duration of the war, an experience on which she looked back with pride and pleasure. With some reluctance, she left practice in the 1950s to raise a family. In the 1960s, after Bill’s retirement through ill health, she returned to general practice in Low Edges in Sheffield, which she combined with a lively social life of golf and travel. After retirement she and Bill moved to Wylde Green in Birmingham, and after Bill’s death, as her memory faded, she moved to Finchley, close to her daughter, Rita. She bore her increasing debility with humour and equanimity, underpinned by a deep but undemonstrative faith. She leaves a son and a daughter, six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and many friends.
Former general practitioner Sheffield (b 1915; q Cork 1939), died from renal failure and arteriosclerotic dementia on 29 February 2008.