Dr Michael Davys was a distinguished and popular consultant psychiatrist and physician with a varied professional practice based in London and Sussex. His greatest skill was that he was a truly brilliant diagnostician which, together with his ageless charm and gravitas and deep concern, contributed greatly to his success in private practice. His patients included members of what was termed the ‘Chelsea set’ and were an eclectic mixture of writers, painters, actors, aristocrats and businessmen, many of whom later became personal friends.
Davys was born in 1922 in Urchfont, Wiltshire, where his father, Rev Canon S D M Davys, was the vicar of St Michael’s Church from 1915 to 1929. His mother, Maud, was the daughter of C A Harries, and his younger brother, Aylwin, was born in 1926.
Through the Johnes family of Hafod, Davys could trace a connection to Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. His grandfather, the Rev John Stephen Davys, was Rector of St John’s, Swansea, and considered ‘one of the ablest preachers in the Principality, in both English and Welsh’, drawing ‘the largest gatherings in South Wales’. His father, Canon Stephen Davys, a traditionalist and Carmarthenshire historian, also had livings in Yorkshire, Cheshire and Wiltshire. Michael will be the third generation to be buried at Llansadwrn, Carmarthenshire.
Davys was educated at Salisbury Cathedral School, then Marlborough College. In 1940, he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford to read Medicine, qualifying in 1946, and continued his medical training at Guy’s Hospital.
In May 1945, as one of the more senior medical students, he went to Belsen to help with the massive medical problems as concentration camps were freed. The death rate, which had been 4 per cent daily until May 1, fell in one week to half the total, and by May 22 had been reduced to 50 a day. His letter home describes 'scenes of indescribable horror, filth, squalor and disease… they have been dying of starvation and typhus at about the rate of 500-600 a day… I have in my hut 300 patients. It is the size of a stable – about 100 are very ill but able to walk or crawl. 200 are lying huddled, next to the dead… I am very tired. We work a very hard 12-hour day. The scenes I have seen here will be vivid memories for the rest of my life.' The number of people buried by the British was 23,000. Of these, 10,000 were dead on the day of liberation; 11,000 died in the camp before they could be evacuated; and 2,000 died after their removal to hospital areas. Davys’s service was cut short because he caught typhus and had to be invalided back to the UK, which qualified him for the defence medal.
He served his National Service as a medical officer in the Royal Navy as Lieutenant RNVR displaying great charm, which he retained throughout his life, and he led an energetic social life. In 1948, he was stationed at HMS Kestrel, the naval air station at Worthy Down near Winchester, and in 1949 served on King George V at Portland.
After leaving the Navy, he returned to Guy’s, qualifying as a consultant physician and psychiatrist in 1953. He remained attached to Guy’s Hospital under Sir Arthur Fripp as Research Fellow in Psychiatry, maintaining contact with his colleagues right up to a few days before he died. He was also Ward Clerk and P/T RMO under Dr Macdonald Critchley and Dr Meadows at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, Queen Square.
Davys served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, attached to HMS President, from 1950 to 1970. He achieved the rank of Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander and was awarded the VRD (Volunteer Reserve Decoration, RNR), later becoming a member of the HMS President Retired Officers’ Association (PROA). His career in the Navy took him to many places and was full of amusing incidents, which he could recount with great wit, making him a popular dinner guest at fashionable London tables.
Upon qualifying, Davys worked mainly in the National Health Service as consultant psychiatrist for the East Sussex Regional Board’s Child Guidance Clinic in Brighton. Depression in children was a special interest of his: he amassed a great deal of clinical data and planned to publish some of his findings, with follow-up data. Alas, he was not able to complete this work, but put in train plans to do so as a research project with the Maudsley Hospital. Previous publications include: co-author of ‘Migraine as a Stress Disorder’, Postgraduate. Medical Journal,1952, and the modern definition of schizophrenia in The Encyclopedia of General Practice, pub. Butterworth,1964.
In 1964, after becoming disenchanted by the way psychiatry was being practised in the NHS, Davys established Bowden House, a private psychiatric clinic in Harrow-on-the-Hill, where he was Consultant Psychiatrist and Joint Medical Director until 1974.
Davys also had consulting rooms in Harley Street and Wimpole Street, and later worked as a consultant to the Churchill Clinic, the Wellington Hospital, the Fitzroy Nuffield, and the Cromwell Hospital. In private practice, patients were referred to him from all over the world, including the Middle East and the US, where he travelled regularly. In 1966, he was elected Corresponding Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, in recognition of meritorious contributions to Psychiatry, and became an International Fellow in 2002. The US Government used him as a Panel Psychiatrist to vet visa applications, and he was also a member of the Anglo- American Medical Society.
Davys did not marry until he was well-established in his profession, as he maintained that it would be a mistake to do so. When he did marry Clarissa Merton, daughter of painter John Merton, in 1965, this ended unhappily in divorce. They had no children and his former wife died soon afterwards.
A keen skier since the early ‘60s, firstly in St Moritz and then regularly in Zermatt, he was a member of the Kandahar, Downhill Only and Ski Club of Great Britain. Indeed, he became something of a local hero in Zermatt when, in 1964, his swift action in accessing vaccine during a typhoid epidemic saved Zermatt from disaster. He introduced many friends, entertainers and patients to the mountains, and was skiing elegantly even last February, though no longer able to repeat his ascent of the Monte Rosa on skins!
Always a lover of climbing and walking, in the early ‘80s he met the climber Roger Mear in north Wales. This led to his involvement with the Footsteps of Scott expedition to the Antarctic, for which he was instrumental in gaining the support of Lord Shackleton as patron who brought in sponsorship from Shell to provide the fuel for the ship. He was also a trustee of the Wilderness Trust, the charitable trust aimed at introducing people to the concept and experience of wilderness and its protection.
Davys always displayed enormous energy and vitality, and had great talent for converting properties, enjoying sharing his houses in both Sussex and Chelsea with guests from far and wide. He would campaign relentlessly for rights of way, access to light, and improvements to beautify the Chelsea mews for all residents.
He inherited his father’s great passion for gardening, and was particularly keen on Mediterranean plants - of which he had a profusion on his sun-drenched roof terrace in Chelsea - and old-fashioned roses. He was on the Committee of the Chelsea Gardens Guild, and pursued sponsorship for prizes, as well as winning several cups himself.
He was a popular member of the Chelsea Arts Club and the Chelsea Society, and could be relied upon for interesting and informed conversation on a wide variety of subjects. He would go out of his way to help friends or their families, and continue to be concerned for their welfare. He had a great love of fine things, especially Arts & Crafts furniture and pewter, and a good eye for paintings, deriving much enjoyment from antiques fairs and sale rooms, as well as patronising friends’ galleries. He was a spontaneous traveller, liking nothing better than to take off suddenly, with minimal luggage, to seek adventure.
Michael will be missed tremendously by his long-standing partner, Penny Buckland, and the many friends and patients to whom he was such a comfort and delight. A memorial service will be held at 11.00 am on 17 September at the church he loved, Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, London SW1.
Michael Davys, consultant psychiatrist, was born in Urchfont, Wiltshire, on June 3, 1922. He died of complications following cardiac surgery in Brighton on June 12, 2002, aged 80.
Many thanks to Penny Buckland for providing this obituary. Can you help? Please contact me with any information you may have. |