Wendy Greengross

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Wendy Greengross
File:Wendy-Greengross-008.jpg
Born (1925-04-29)29 April 1925
Golders Green, London, UK
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Spouse(s) Alex Kates
Children 5

Wendy Elsa Greengross (29 April 1925 – 10 October 2012) was a British general practitioner and broadcaster. The Independent called her "a pioneering counsellor and one of the leading figures in fighting for equal rights for the disabled and the elderly".[1]

Early life

Wendy Elsa Greengross was born on 29 April 1925, at 10 St Mary's Road, Golders Green, London, the daughter of Morris Philip Greengross, born Moisze Fiszel Gringross (1892–1970), a manufacturing jeweller, and his wife, Miriam Greengross, née Abrahamson (1899/1900–1968).[2]

Her father was mayor of Holborn from 1960 to 1961, and her brother Sir Alan Greengross (born 1929) was a leading Conservative member of the Greater London Council.[2]

Greengross was educated at South Hampstead High School from 1936 until she was evacuated to Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, followed by University College Hospital, where she qualified as a doctor in 1949, and in 1952 won a Fulbright Scholarship to the Chicago Lying-in Hospital.[2]

Career

Together with her husband, Greengross ran a large general practice in Tottenham, London.[1] Opened in 1955, it was one of the UK's first group practices.[3] She particularly promoted family planning, and they were the country's first GP practice to have a dedicated marriage guidance.[1] Greengross worked as a GP for 35 years.[1]

Greengross received counsellor training from the Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate), and would go on to become its Chief Medical Adviser.[1] In the late 1960s, Greengross started teaching pastoral care and counselling at Leo Baeck College.[2]

Greengross went into broadcasting in the early 1970s, joining the BBC Radio 4 counselling programme If You Think You've Got Problems, which ran for nearly eight years.[4] She had her own television show on BBC1 in 1973, Let's Talk it Over.[4]

From 1972 to 1976, Greengross was an agony aunt for The Sun, but "felt the letters passed to her were more about titillation than education".[4]

Greengross wrote Jewish and Homosexual, published in 1980, by the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, which "led the way towards equality within the British Reform and Liberal movements".[2] Greengross published several sex education books, particularly focused on more marginalised groups, such as Sex and the Handicapped Child in 1980.[2]

Greengross was a founding member and chair of the organisation Sexual Problems of Disabled People (SPOD), and a founder of the Residential Care Consortium.[2]

Selected publications

  • Sex in the Middle Years (1969)[5]
  • Sex in Early Marriage (1970)[6]
  • Entitled to Love: the Sexual and Emotional Needs of the Handicapped (1976)[7]
  • Sex and the Handicapped Child (1980)[8]
  • Jewish and Homosexual (1980)[9]
  • Living, Loving and Ageing (1989), with her sister-in-law Baroness Sally Greengross[10]

Personal life

In 1951, she married a surgeon, Alex Kates, and they had five children.[1]

Greengross had two daughters, Hilary and Polly, and three sons Nick, Richard, and Trevor (d. 1997).

Greengross lived for many years in Hampstead Garden Suburb, before a retirement flat in Regent's Park Road, where she died on 10 October 2012 of pneumonia.[2] She was buried at Cheshunt's Jewish Cemetery.[2]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.