My mother, Bethan Davies, who has died aged 89, was a consultant paediatric audiologist at Charing Cross hospital, London. Between the early 1970s and her retirement in 1993, she built up a renowned unit there for the diagnosis of deaf children.
She was passionate about her work and even when dealing with the most difficult of children she rarely failed to get an audiogram, assessing the quietest sound that the young patient could hear. Bethan had a particular interest in the hearing problems of patients with Down’s syndrome.
Born in Gravesend, Kent, to Welsh parents, Enid (nee Thickens) and Benjamin Davies, who were both teachers, Bethan spoke only Welsh until the age of five. On leaving school in Gravesend, Bethan trained at the West London hospital medical school and qualified as a doctor in 1952. In the same year she married Ralph Schwiller, a concert violinist. They moved to Bournemouth, where Bethan worked for the local authority health department. In 1958 she moved to Southampton as a school doctor. Bethan and Ralph divorced a few years later.
In 1970 she welcomed the first of the many Burmese cats she would keep throughout her life. Bethan also collected cat pictures and 20th-century illustrated children’s books.
In her mid-40s, she signed up to study for an MEd in audiology at Manchester University. At the time the Inner London Education Authority was concerned that children were arriving in schools with hearing aids from hospitals but without essential information for teachers. It was decided that four specialist clinical teams should be established, one in each quadrant of London.
Bethan was identified as one of the people from the MEd course who should be based at Guy’s hospital, London, once she had finished her training. However, changes were afoot in the NHS and halfway through the course Bethan heard that Guy’s had appointed its own medical audiologist.
When she arrived in the capital after graduating in 1973, she toured hospitals looking for a base. Initially, Bethan established a clinic at Paddington Green children’s hospital. The new Charing Cross hospital was just opening in Hammersmith and Bethan decided to take a look and eventually discovered a large, empty room that was supposed to be the patients’ library. She commandeered the space and it became her audiological base.
In 1986, she married Val Tyrrell, a professor of chemistry at Kensington and Chelsea College, and they lived in Kingston, south-west London. In 2001 Bethan, Val and the cats moved to Wilmslow, Cheshire, but she was starting to show signs of the memory loss that later developed into Alzheimer’s.
She is survived by Val and me, by her stepchildren, Pippa, Fiona, Patrick and Sebastián, and by 13 step-grandchildren.
Her brother, Jeffrey, who emigrated to Australia in the 60s, predeceased her.
Bethan Davies obituary
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