Former Appleby GP, busy mother and hospice charity supporter Pauline Coulthwaite has died, aged 87.
She was brought up in Bolton, along with her younger sister, Pamela. Hers was a close-knit family with aunts, uncles and cousins living close by.
Her parents were very keen that both she and Pamela should go on to university and made great sacrifices to ensure that they had that opportunity.
Pauline trained as a medic at Edinburgh University and loved her time there. She became fascinated by surgery and won the first Gold Medal ever to be awarded to a female student by Edinburgh University. This was sufficiently unexpected at the time that the Chancellor refused point-blank to present her with any such medal, necessitating the late Duke of Edinburgh to break from his summer holiday in Balmoral, so that he could come and present it to her personally during her graduation ceremony.
She never lost that combination of practicality and precision, or the willingness to do what others had not yet achieved.
She married her husband John in 1961 and they had 56 very happy years together before his death in 2017. They moved from Edinburgh to Belper, near Derby, and then came to Appleby when he took over the veterinary practice there.
For a couple of years, they lived happily in Boroughgate, with Pauline as secretary, book-keeper, dispenser of pills and potions, and full-time mother – despite the four-floor accommodation and two very young children, Richard and Deborah.
Pauline started as a GP in Appleby under Dr Peter Delap, and when she later went into partnership with him, the family moved up the hill to Barrow Coombe and Mark and Emma joined the family soon after. Barrow Coombe was a busy place – a hive of activity with phones ringing, punctual coffee times, tea at 4-30pm so Pauline could get back to evening surgery.
Pauline served the Appleby District for nearly 40 years – this dedication to duty for her community was one of her defining characteristics. She cared deeply about each person and loved her life’s work immensely and on her retirement, felt proud to have served the people of Appleby and the surrounding area to the best of her ability. Many people have shared stories with her family describing her as an excellent family doctor: a clear, no-nonsense, but kindly practitioner who believed strongly in fairness and the NHS.
During one of the floods, she and Dr Delap held a crisis meeting and decided that they needed one of them to work east of the river and one to the west as the bridges were all closed.
“The bit we still can’t quite believe is that she watched as Dr Delap swam through a raging flood with her medical bag so she could treat patients on the Eastern side of the river. That left an impression on Mum, and she felt that she also wanted to deliver that dedication to duty,” recalled Pauline’s family.
When she took over, on Dr Delap’s retirement, she went into partnership with Jim Leitch and moved the practice from the White House into bespoke premises on Low Wiend, with the library on the first floor. She thoroughly enjoyed working with this softly spoken, caring and highly intelligent doctor who was tragically taken too soon.
As numbers rose, they went into partnership with Geoff Sharpe and he proved a god-send in terms of his ability to organise the computerisation of the practice medical records. By the time she left the practice to retire, there were three GPs, an excellent nursing team and administrative staff operating a highly efficient operation from their current premises at the bottom of Chapel Street.
Despite being a busy GP, Pauline was so organised she could find time for the other things that brought her pleasure – dress making, entertaining, camping holidays through France and across the UK, gardening and flower arranging, fly-tying, conversational French, NADFAS fine art lectures, and church.
She decided, on retirement, that she might, in some way still “be useful” and having witnessed many times the huge sacrifice made by patients and their friends from Appleby, and further up the valley, who made the long round trip to Carlisle to visit those undergoing cancer treatment or palliative care on a regular basis, she decided to act.
At that time the hospice at home movement was very much in its infancy and nobody thought it could work in a rural area. She raised funds, organised, arranged speaking engagements where she would talk about the life of a country GP or palliative care at home. She led meetings, typed up minutes, wrote to MPs and ministers, encouraged others to contribute time and resources, organised the flower festivals and Christmas Hospice at Home concerts in church and countless other tasks.
Perhaps the cause that most typified her later years was her commitment to Hospice at Home. It was the way she could still make a practical difference to her community, so she did.
As time went on, Pauline started to suffer more with her health, requiring a walker and then having one leg amputated above the knee. Despite this, and her husband’s death, she continued to live independently. Later in her retirement she also found time to extend herself into some new hobbies – cinema club in the market hall, pilates, and more.
In January, 2022, Pauline went into Stobar’s Hall, Kirkby Stephen, where she still lived life to the fullest extent she could – beetling around in her wheelchair, reading the newspaper every day and writing letters, gardening, helping to feed other residents and welcoming visitors. The care she received there was simply outstanding.
Pauline will be missed by her family and many friends and remembered as having lived a busy, productive and caring life.
