Gweneth Whitteridge (1910–1993)

editor of Medical Historv), who poached him from the Royal Society of Medicine, and for a generation of medical historians from the 1940s to the 1960s he was the Library's public face as Supervisor of the Reading Room. Latterly he was in charge of the photographic service and there too he built up a satisfied clientele. Sidney caught only the tail-end of the Library's antediluvian period at Willesden but he was a key figure in the next phase, lasting until the early 1960s, when the Library struggled on a shoe-string to develop a role. For several years he was actually third in the hierarchy after Bishop and Noel Poynter. his deputy and successor; later he would comment sardonically on the number of professionals needed to do what he had once done single-handed. Besides his service to readers, Sidney was the valued factotum of Bishop and Poynter and was much in demand, in his spare time, for reference-checking and bibliographical searches. He contributed to successive editions of Garrison-Morton. After Bishop's untimely death he was proud that his bibliography of his writings was accepted for Medical History and regarded the appearance of his name in Current work as the ultimate accolade. John Symons