Gwyneth's In My Life . . .

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

. . . But Not In My Tree, Page

To include friends, inspirations and others who aren't in my tree.

Bertram John Bickford FRCS (1913-2001)
Mr. Bickford touched the lives of our family briefly, but deeply for a few short years when he became Dad's consultant surgeon. After about 20 years of suffering with a serious complaint of the digestive system, Dad finally managed to get the attention of the medical profession and after the local hospital failed to solve his problem, it was escalated up to Broadgreen specialist hospital in Liverpool, where Mr. Bickford took charge.

This included performing an emergency life-saving operation which took 10-12 hours and during which time, the other theatre staff told us, Mr. Bickford never left the operating theatre, even for a personal break. During his recovery, Mr. Bickford told Dad that he had probably given him another ten years of life. That ten years turned out to be thirty.

Other hospital staff also mentioned that Mr. Bickford had been consultant surgeon to King George VI. I haven't yet found any evidence to support this, but he certainly has an illustrious career.

Thelwall Memorials Project
My involvement in this project lead to me becoming interested in the people who had lived, died or at least been buried in Thelwall.

The : Thelwall - Burial Index lists the 870 or so whose burials were explored but in researching their lives their close relatives were included and profiles have been created for many of them too. As main co-ordinator on the project, I learnt about all of them. A few of them do connect to my family tree but after nearly 3 years on the project, as a whole, they feel like extended family.