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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Ann Gwendolen Dally was born in Marylebone, London in 1926. Her father, Claud Mullins, was one of the founders of the Family Planning Association and of the Marriage Guidance Council. Ann won an Open Exhibition in Modern History to Somerville College, Oxford, and graduated in 1946. She then completed a year's service at the War Office in Germany and Austria. She began her medical training at St Thomas's Hospital in 1947, where she was one of the first three women to be offered a place for the first year course. She was a Nicholas Research Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Weir Research Fellow of the Wandsworth Hospital Group. She qualified MB, BS in 1953. She also gained a diploma in Obstetrics and experience in general practice. She married Peter Dally in 1950 and went on to have six children. In 1969 Ann and Peter divorced and she married Philip Egerton in 1979.
She worked in several areas of medicine, including posts as a research registrar in general medicine, a medical journalist, radio psychiatrist in a phone in programme for Radio London for nearly 10 years, an editor of a paediatric journal (Maternal and Child Care) and in general practice (Family Doctor). She also wrote a regular column for the Sunday Telegraph and Evening News. Despite never training formally in psychiatry, in partnership with her ex-husband, Dr. Peter Dally, Ann practiced psychiatry in private practice. Peter and Ann were in practice together from 1968 until 1994. She was an associate of The Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Ann's main area of interest was families, mothers, babies and adolescents. It was this experience of mothers and children that led to an understanding of many psychiatric problems. Whilst sharing a private psychiatric practice with Peter, she became interested in drug addicts and their problems. She officially stopped treating drug addicts in September 1987.
In 1987 Ann was charged by the GMC of irresponsible prescribing, which was found not to be proved. The GMC found Ann guilty of professional misconduct and directed that for a period of 14 months, her registration be conditional on compliance with the requirement that she should not prescribe or possess controlled drugs. The GMC restored her full, unconditional registration at the end of the 14 month conditional period. An appeal was made to the Privy Council on the grounds that if the general charge was held not to be proven, this must imply that her treatment of patients was not culpable. The Privy Council dismissed the appeal against the GMC.
Ann Dally wrote many books including An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Medicine; A Doctor's Story; The Morbid Streak: Destructive Aspects of the Personality; Mothers - Their Power and Influence; and Women Under The Knife: A History of Surgery.
Dally was latterly a research fellow at The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. She died on 24 March 2007.
Peter was born in 1923 and retired from private practice in 1994. Peter undertook his medical training at St. Thomas' Hospital too. He retired from the Westminster Hospital in 1988 at the age of 65 but continued with the private practice until the house in Devonshire Place was sold in 1994.