Papers of John Syson Brackenridge, L.D.S., (1919-2005)

Lister Journal 1939-1943; students tickets, 1938-1942; certificates; funeral tributes; biographical details relating to John Brackenridge; tributes and article relating to Robert Brackenridge.

John Brackenridge was born on the 25th October 1919 in Stepps, Glasgow. He was educated at Hutcheson's Grammar School and Coatbridge Secondary School. He registered as a dental student at the Glasgow Dental Hospital and School in October 1938, taking classes at the Anderson College of Medicine, St Mungo's College, the University of Glasgow and Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He was appointed art editor of the Lister Journal (published by the students of the Anderson and St Mungo's Colleges of medicine and of the Dental Hospital and School) and became its President. Many of his cartoons appear in the Lister Journal and he later published cartoons in national newspapers and drew caricatures of his RAF and golfing friends and colleagues.

Following qualifying L.D.S. in 1942, he took up an Assistantship in Dumbarton. He joined the Royal Air Force Dental Branch in April 1943 and was posted to Algiers for a year in 1944. In 1945 he was posted to El Adem, south of Tobruk, Libya and then, in 1946 to Castel Benito, Tripoli. He finished the war at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire and was demobilised in 1947.

He married Joan Lillian Stroud on 3rd April 1947 and set up home in St Albans where he worked as an assistant dental surgeon before becoming a manager in Letchworth. The couple had three children: Dinah (b.1949), Celia (b.1950) and Glenn (b.1953). The family moved to Laleham, Middlesex and Brackenridge worked in a single-handed dental practice in Staines, moving to Ashford in 1957.

He was very active in the BDA and Local Dental Committee affairs. He was appointed as a member of the Tattershall Committee, set up to examine alternative methods of payment for General Dental Practitioners in the National Health Service, and was a member of the Dental Treatment Committee of Middlesex Executive Council. He was Chairman of Hounslow and Twickenham Section of the B.D.A. from 1960-61 and in 1974 was elected President of the Middlesex and Hertfordshire Branch of the B.D.A. He was made an Honorary Life Member of the BDA in 1979.

In 1981 the couple moved to Englefield Green, Near Egham. John Brackenridge died on 1st April 2005.

Included also in the collection are items relating to Robert Brackenridge, John's brother.

Robert Brackenridge (1917- 2008) graduated in medicine MB ChB from the University of Glasgow in 1941 and served in the RAF during the Second World War. Following demobilisation, he spent a year working in a Glasgow hospital's chest clinic . He entered the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow FRFPS in 1949 (FRCP Glasg., 1973) and gained an MD from the University of Glasgow in 1950. He subsequently moved into the world of medical insurance in London, working part-time in a hospital unit first in Lambeth and then at St Thomas's. He was the author of The Medical Aspects of Life Assurance, 1962 and The Medical Selection of Life Risks, first published in 1977, now into its fifth edition. He died on the 1 January 2008

Access to some items may be restricted. Please contact Heritage staff at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

Acc: 2015.233 Badge and ribbon of Past President of the British Dental Association, Middlesex and Hertfordshire Branch.