Ernst Jacoby

Ernst Jacoby was one of that historically important and influential group of refugee physicians who came to Britain in the 1930s and contributed so much to patient care and medical, intellectual and social life during the following decades. He was a highly respected and well-known Birmingham psychiatrist for many years.

Born on 25 October 1908 in Berlin, where he was educated, he graduated MD Basle in 1934 at the age of 26, following in his father's footsteps. For the next 5 years he worked as an ear, nose and throat specialist and in general practice. However, the authorities began to restrict his freedom of practice in a Jewish old people's home so he fled to England in 1939 to join his mother and brother Fritz (who later became a distinguished academic and professor of histology at Cardiff). Arriving with only one pound in his pocket and unable to practise medicine for many years, he resorted to a variety of menial jobs to survive.

During the war, he was interned on the Isle of Man and when he was finally able to be included in the Medical Register he began the career climb from junior medical officer to consultant psychiatrist. He was now in a position to volunteer for the Army and became a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He served mostly in India where he was in charge of West African patients.

After demobilisation, he completed his training in psychiatry at All Saints Hospital in Birmingham, where he met his wife Barbara, a social worker, whom he married in 1948. In due course he became a consultant at Highcroft Hospital, Birmingham, where he was a popular colleague and a dedicated clinician who put his patients first and spent little time on committees. The sole exception was the Parole Board, on which he was proud to have been invited to sit for two terms. He became an influential member, particularly valued for his shrewd judgement. He very much enjoyed those years and the friendships he made with members of the judiciary, probation service and criminologists who served with him. He became increasingly interested in forensic psychiatry and on retirement he developed a second career in that speciality, working for many years on a sessional basis together with Barbara at the Midland Centre for Forensic Psychiatry, which at the time was housed in a bungalow at All Saints Hospital, until he retired again in his late 70s.

Ernst was a frequent and well-known expert witness in the Birmingham Courts on major criminal cases. He was a staunch supporter at the time when forensic psychiatry was struggling to establish itself in the West Midlands and he contributed much wisdom to the training of young forensic psychiatrists, which they long remembered and appreciated. He was, for instance, frankly sceptical of psychological hypotheses mitigating responsibility and insisted that his junior colleagues thought long and hard about what they were proposing before a report was completed and they committed themselves in court.

He finally retired to a contented home life with Barbara and his family and he kept in touch with a few close colleagues. Until a few months before his death he enthusiastically followed his interests in music and opera, read widely and was a keen bird watcher. But then Parkinson's disease overtook him, culminating in a heart attack, which he survived for 2 months. He died on 8 December, 1999. He leaves his wife, son and daughter and four grandchildren.