Darrell Sheldon Wilkinson, MD, FRCP, FRSM

Abstract

One of the great doyens of British Dermatology Dr Darrell Wilkinson died suddenly on 16 August 2009, only a few days after celebrating his 90th birthday, at home with family and friends. Darrell Sheldon Wilkinson was born on 7 August 1919 in Gillingham, Kent, the only son of Edgar Sheldon Wilkinson, a Surgeon Commander in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and later a GP in London. His mother Muriel (Mitzi) was a lady with prodigious intellect and talent who became a concert grade pianist. Darrell was educated at Epsom College but while there his father died. Consequently he was brought up mostly by his grandparents and aunts but also became greatly influenced by his housemaster and Latin teacher. From his mother and housemaster he acquired a lifelong love of Greek and Roman history, classical music, poetry and culture. Initially Darrell studied classics but soon switched to science and gained a scholarship into St Thomas’ Hospital in London. He graduated MRCS, LRCP in January 1942. This, of course, was right in the middle of World War II. Darrell recalls the red glow of London being bombed and was at St Thomas’ Hospital the night it was extensively damaged (15 September 1940). It was here at St Thomas’ that he met his future wife Jo who was at the Nightingale School of Nursing and they married after the war was over. Darrell spent an abbreviated period as House Surgeon and House Physician at St Thomas’ Hospital and its affiliated hospital, Hydestile, before going to Rye as an assistant GP.