Obituary - Professor J Stuart Horner 1932 - 2002

Derek Rutherford pays tribute to a former chairman of UKTA Ltd

Stuart Horner had a distinguished career in the field of public health. Qualifying at the University of Birmingham Medical School in 1956, Stuart went on to post -graduate with Diplomas in Public and Industrial Health.

In 1960, together with Jacque, whom he had married in 1958, he moved to Dewsbury as an Assistant Medical Officer of Health and was later to hold the senior post in Hillingdon, Croydon and Preston.

For 45 years he was a member of the British Medical Association and was elected to its Public Health Committee in 1972 and to the BMA Council in 1975. Stuart completed 24 years on the Council, during which time he served as Chairman of the Community Medicine Committee and then as Chairman of the Ethics Committee. He was awarded the Fellowship of the Association in 1990 and made a Vice President in 1998. The latter award is bestowed on very few members and clearly indicated the respect Stuart had earned from his peers.

He was made an honorary member of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1995 he was awarded his MD for his thesis on 'Medical Ethics and the Regulation of Medical Practice' from the University of Manchester.

His commitment to voluntary service in medical care is also seen in his Commander of St John Ambulance, a position and role of which he was immensely proud.

He became a trustee of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance in 1972 and chairman from 1981 - 1989. As Chairman he commenced the task of completely overhauling the work of the trust, an important outcome of which was the initiative to establish the Institute of Alcohol Studies. It has come to be a respected body in the alcohol policy field not only in the UK, but also in the European Union through its work with Eurocare and internationally.

Stuart could not have achieved what he did, or sustained his struggles in the socio-medical political world, without the support of a loyal wife and family. A family of which he was immensely proud. It was when speaking of his family, Jacque his wife, Fiona and Jonathan his children and his grandchildren, that he dropped his persona of formality. A personal letter from Stuart was still written in a very formal style. However, when you got behind his mask you experienced the real Stuart – a person engrossed in his family, caring and loving. A person who could enjoy a joke even at his own expense.

Our desire is always to write of the best of a friend. However, we have to acknowledge that saints can be difficult to live with and Stuart was no exception. He was a perfectionist, not suffering fools and irritable over slip-shod work.

In ending this tribute, it is most appropriate to recall his Christian faith – the driving force of his life.

Attending a Baptist church in Leicester, under the ministry of the Reverend Hector Harcup, had a profound influence in his formative years - an influence which he never betrayed. Stuart took an active part as a deacon in the life of the Baptist church in Shirley and West Wickam and was a member of the Council of Spurgeon's College. When he came to Preston he found in the Free Methodists his spiritual home and became Church Secretary.

However it was not any church institution that guided his life, it was his own walk with God. In summing up Stuart's life, the lines penned by Bunyan are appropriate:

Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.

No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a pilgrim

Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away:
He'll not fear what men say;
He'll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.