Wendy Greengross

English general practitioner and broadcaster

Wendy Greengross

Born	(1925-04-29)29 April 1925 Golders Green, London, UK
Died	10 October 2012(2012-10-10) (aged 87)
Spouse	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

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Doctor Wendy Greengross: Champion of the elderly and the disabled". The Independent. 6 November 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Bayfield, Tony (2016). "Greengross [married name Katz, afterwards Kates], Wendy Elsa (1925–2012), general practitioner and broadcaster". Greengross [married name Katz, later Kates], Wendy Elsa (1925–2012). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). OUP. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/106704. Retrieved 26 November 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ Gulland, A. (2012). "Wendy Greengross". BMJ. 346: e8504. doi:10.1136/bmj.e8504. S2CID 220082859.
^ ^a ^b ^c Hayman, Suzie (15 October 2012). "Wendy Greengross obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
^ Greengross, Wendy. (1969). Sex in the middle years. National Marriage Guidance Council (Great Britain). London: National Marriage Guidance Council. ISBN 0-85351-000-8. OCLC 15599.
^ Greengross, Wendy. (1970). Sex in early marriage. National Marriage Guidance Council (Great Britain). London: National Marriage Guidance Council. ISBN 0-85351-005-9. OCLC 16217785.
^ Greengross, Wendy. (1976). Entitled to love : the sexual and emotional needs of the handicapped. London: Malaby Press [for] National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases. ISBN 0-460-14010-8. OCLC 2633700.
^ Greengross, Wendy. (1980). Sex and the handicapped child. Rugby [England]: National Marriage Guidance Council, Herbert Gray College. ISBN 0-85351-051-2. OCLC 13781441.
^ Greengross, Wendy (1982). Jewish and Homosexual. Reform Synagogues of Great Britain. ISBN 0950592072.
^ Greengross, Sally. (1992). Living, Loving and Ageing : Sexual and Personal Relationships in Later Life. Greengross, Wendy. (New ed.). ISIS Large Print Bks. ISBN 1-85695-040-9. OCLC 59921113.