Dr. Leslie Doyle

Dr Leslie Doyle; biography

Consultant Editor; Greystones born, Trinity College graduate in medicine and past President Manchester Antiquarian Society; forebears were Greystones house and ship builders, merchants, realtors and auctioneers.

French, Percy songwriter and entertainer

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Doctor Leslie Doyle

Leslie Doyle was a descendant of one of the two great founding families of Greystones, the Doyles and Evans' who pioneered in house construction and commerce.He was a highly respect member of the medical profession and the author of many learned papers which were published by medical journals.

Leslie Doyle's career in medicine centred in Manchester, Lancashire, where he raised his family.His ties with Greystones, however, remained strong throughout his life.Each year he returned with his children until they grew up and produced families of their own; and latterly with his wife, Joan, to spend summer at Bushfield, one of many houses built by his grandfather on Church Road.

Enthusiastic as a historian he constantly searched the records for history, tracking the town's development and connections at home and abroad.He kept copious notes of his findings which he generously passed on to others interested in local history.

Leslie Doyle was born 23 July 1919.

Leslie Doyle

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Dr. Leslie Doyle

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Dr. Doyle said.

In Beckett's footsteps

What appealed to Leslie most was the size of the subject and the number of disciplines it called for.This was during the war years when business in Greystones for everybody was bad."I wasn't quite certain that my father could keep me going there and I worked for a scholarship called a Sizarship at Trinity College Dublin."

It was a very old scholarship that dated back to the 18th century.People like Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Beckett were Sizars. (Sam Beckett spent family holidays in Greystones in a rented house.)

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Leslie took science, applied mathematics, chemistry and physics.

"You were supposed to have poor circumstances but everyone went up for it.I was lucky to get it though Trinity, I think, have abolished it since then."Leslie said.

"It was very competitive because all the chaps in the north of Ireland came down for it."

Free Dinners

Said Leslie: "There was great joy the day I got it, I can tell you.It provided very reduced fees and a free dinner at Trinity at six o'clock."

After qualifying in 1944 he became house physician at Dr. Steevens' Hospital, Dublin, and was senior house surgeon for a year in 1945.A job as house surgeon at the National Children's Hospital in Harcourt Street followed.

In 1947 he took M.R.C.P.I. "That was the higher examination in medicine," said Doctor Doyle, "Because medicine intrigued me more than surgery.I like the mental challenge of diagnosis, trying to figure out what was causing symptoms of pain.

"I did the thesis in children's diseases so I did the diploma in child health as well."

Even with such good qualifications it Leslie said there was "almost no chance of getting a job in Dublin, nothing between a consultantship and a houseman unless your father had a big bankroll and you could hang on.So I was forced to go away and I joined the Royal Army Medical Corps for two years."

Red Sea and Love

Because he was a member of the Royal College he was made a graded physician and four shillings and sixpence a day more.After attachment to military hospitals he spent 15 months on a hospital ship during the Palestine troubles.
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Dr. Doyle did have one disappointment: "I tried to bribe one of the Egyptian bus conductors to give me one of his buttons.It had the head of King Farouk.No matter what I offered he wouldn't give it to me."

The last big trip was to Hong Kong and then to Aden across the Indian Ocean."The ship stopped for about two days because the engine broke down and they had to work on it," Said the doctor.

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Like most emigrants Leslie Doyle always dreamed of settling back in the old homestead one day."I always intended coming back to Greystones when I retired and getting a boat.But all my children got married in a short space of time and had children fairly quickly."

One of his grandchildren at twelve months of age had to have an open-heart operation: "So we delayed coming back to Ireland.We got more and more involved.At one time I used to find myself taking them to school and bringing them back.
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"I wasn't a runner at all," Leslie said."There was a bit of rumpus between two groups in it and I was a sort of outside person who could satisfy both sides and that's how I became President."

Leslie's presidential address was about a surgeon from Manchester Royal Infirmary who was involved in body-snatching at the turn of the 19th century.

He will be sadly missed.