Lotte Theresa Newman

Abstract

General practitioner and champion of women in medicine. She was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on Jan 22, 1929, and died in London, UK, with Alzheimer's disease on April 26, 2019, aged 90 years. Lotte Newman was part of the cohort of German Jewish children born during the decade preceding World War 2 whose parents had the foresight to leave their country before the anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party moved from oppressive to lethal. Newman's father seems to have been more foresighted than most. Both her parents were doctors and her father George moved to Glasgow in 1933 to requalify in medicine in the UK. By the time that National Socialism had become truly dangerous, he was practising as a general practitioner (GP) in north London and brought the rest of his family to the UK. “I can clearly remember the night that we went away”, Newman recalled in an interview recorded in 1998. “I can't remember the exact date but it was in '37, and I know we were put to bed quite normally and nobody said anything to us because I think my mother who went with us then would have been too frightened that somebody would stop us”, she said. Reunited in England, the family settled down to their new life, one during which Newman was to acquire a prominent place in UK medicine. It was partly out of admiration for her father that Newman followed in his footsteps. After a BSc at Birmingham University, she trained at King's College London and Westminster Hospital medical schools, qualifying in 1957 and going to work as a GP with her father at his practice in Edgware, north London. She subsequently set up her own practice, moving in 1968 to a medical centre that she launched in collaboration with a colleague. With her new practice up and running, Newman began to broaden the scope of her activities, not least through the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). She became one of its examiners in 1972, joined its Council in 1980, and was elected to its presidency from 1994 to 1997. She was the first President to be chosen through a ballot of the entire membership and, more importantly in her own mind, only the second woman to have held the post. The role of women in medicine—their inadequate representation at all levels of responsibility and decision making—was one of the drivers of her many non-clinical activities. Newman was ahead if her time, according to Melanie Jones, a past President of the Medical Women's Federation. “What we've talked about in the 21st century was what Lotte talked about in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.” Nor were Newman's concerns confined to the interests of doctors. “I remember her talking about the fact that a lot of research and drug trials were done on young men in their 20s and 30s”, says Jones. Newman doubted that the findings could always be extrapolated to cover women. Newman was also active in the Medical Women's Federation, serving as its President during 1987–88. Among those who first encountered her through its meetings was gynaecologist Professor Wendy Savage, now Honorary Life President of the pressure group Keep Our NHS Public. Newman, she says, had been a member of the organisation Doctors for a Woman's Choice on Abortion (now Doctors for Choice UK) and, as such, “a pro-choice doctor in the days when there weren't so many of those, at least publicly”. She describes Newman as very organised, and possessed of a certain gravitas. “Lotte was always very reasonable and sensible and never attacked people. She was a facilitating kind of person…She thought in a strategic way to get things changed.” Professor Jacky Hayden, Dean of Postgraduate Medical Studies for Health Education England before she retired, met Newman through her membership of the RCGP Council. She recalls Newman's kindness. “When I started on the Council I was one of three or four women, and I was younger than the others…She thought it was important to have younger women on the Council.” Newman went out of her way to help Hayden. “She supported and enabled those of us who worked alongside her”, says Hayden. “She was always passionate about the things she believed in.” Newman leaves a husband, Norman Aronsohn, and children Simone, Simon, David, and Alexander.