Dr. Charles Grenville Picton-Warlow
Dr. Picton-Warlow was the only foreign citizen killed in the crash. Born 11 November 1936, at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, he had shown great promise as a musician in his early years (he played the flute), but eventually chose a career in medicine over music. He was the son of John Grenville and Myra Picton-Warlow.
Grenville, as he was known to his family and friends, attended the University of Adelaide (in South Australia), and then the University of Western Australia, where he was a member of the rugby team.
He became a medical doctor in 1959, graduating with distinction from the University of W.A. in Nedlands (a suburb of Perth). His first services to the medical profession were at the Royal Perth Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital (Perth), in the Unit for Research in Newborn Children's Medicine at Women's Hospital (Sydney), and at the Royal Alexandria Hospital (also in Sydney).
He had been working in the UK (through the Hadley travelling fellowship) since 1966, carrying on pre- and neo-natal metabolic studies at Hammersmith Hospital (Ducane Rd.) in London, where he enjoyed the rare distinction of having two of his papers accepted for publication by the British Medical Association
At the time of the crash, he had been lecturing at universities in the U.S. and Canada, and was finishing up a tour of American hospitals. He was set to return in two weeks to a position as senior lecturer (with professor William MacDonald) in Child Health at the University of W.A.
Examples of the quality of his work can be found from the time of his membership in the Princess Margaret Hospital's Pediatric Health Department, where his duties consisted mainly of the study and treatment of Rh newborns. He had performed many life-saving procedures for these at-risk infants, and was praised by a peer at the University as "one of Australia's greatest pediatricians".
Other honors given Dr. Picton-Warlow include the Helen Jane Lamard prize in surgery, the British Medical Assn. prize, the Gold Medal of the British Medical Association, and the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Gift Fund in obstetrics. He was also one of two Western Australian doctors admitted to membership of the Royal Australian College of Physicians in 1965. The Royal College noted him in its Roll of Honour upon his death.
His current work from Hammersmith had included studies into the correlations between health problems in old age and likely neo-natal causal factors. Much of this was lost in the lecture notes destroyed in the crash.
He left behind his wife, Rosina Florence, and children James, Camilla, and Miranda. They were en route by ship back to Australia from England at the time of the crash.
