Ostensibly, A Doctor In Lowryland is about author Peter Harris' father, Dr Harry Harris who opened his new practice at Rose Bank on Bolton Road in 1947. Yet this, kind of, biography is so much more than that, allowing the reader to meander through the streets and culture of what is now a bygone era.
The link to 'Lowryland' is that the same streets and characters that were painted in matchstick style, were the same streets and characters inhabited by a suited-up doctor doing his rounds and seeing patients in the post-war years.
"My father never met Lowry but he knew the streets that he painted and sketched like the back of his hand" states Peter Harris "The back-to-backs were where most his patients lived, the mills and factories where were they worked and the corner shops and pubs were where they bought their meagre groceries and enjoyed some brief respite from the post-war hardships."
Although it's a very personal recollection, old Salford looms large, with references to the Rialto, Tenerife Street, the UCP Tripe Shop on Broad Street, the Woolpack pub and the Salisbury Hotel amongst other sites. There's also a section on the 55 underprivileged Salford children who, in 1948, were taken by the Swiss Red Cross to Switzerland for a 'health holiday'
But running through the spine of the paperback book are the changes to the health service and the efforts of the city's medical officer of health, Lance Burn... "a man who had both a clear view of what was needed on the grand scale and also for the finer detail – for small improvements that could be made to improve and brighten up life even in the uniformly grey post-war years..."
The book is suffused with grainy black and white photos from back in the day, documenting life at the original 1940s surgery in Pendleton through to the ongoing 'slum' demolitions of the 1970s – "it was the end of an era I am glad not to have witnessed", concludes Peter Harris.
Now everyone can witness this eloquent trip down memory lane – with a metaphorical stethoscope and thermometer of the coughing, spluttering times.
A Doctor of Lowryland (£5) is available from publisher Susan Richardson email her for details at wattywalton@gmail.com Copies are also available from The Lowry shop at Salford Quays
(1).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
(3).jpeg)
.png)
(1).JPG)
