Wendy Greengross

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Wendy Greengross
Born(1925-04-29)29 April 1925
Golders Green, London, UK
Died10 October 2012(2012-10-10) (aged 87)
SpouseAlex Kates
Children5

Wendy Elsa Greengross (29 April 1925 – 10 October 2012) was a British general practitioner and broadcaster. The Independent called her "a pioneering counsellor and one of the leading figures in fighting for equal rights for the disabled and the elderly".[1]

Early life

Wendy Elsa Greengross was born on 29 April 1925, at 10 St Mary's Road, Golders Green, London, the daughter of Morris Philip Greengross, born Moisze Fiszel Gringross (1892–1970), a manufacturing jeweller, and his wife, Miriam Greengross, née Abrahamson (1899/1900–1968).[2]

Her father was mayor of Holborn from 1960 to 1961, and her brother Sir Alan Greengross (born 1929) was a leading Conservative member of the Greater London Council.[2]

Greengross was educated at

Chicago Lying-in Hospital.[2]

Career

Together with her husband, Greengross ran a large general practice in

marriage guidance.[1] Greengross worked as a GP for 35 years.[1]

Greengross received counsellor training from the

Marriage Guidance Council (now Relate), and would go on to become its Chief Medical Adviser.[1] In the late 1960s, Greengross started teaching pastoral care and counselling at Leo Baeck College.[2]

Greengross went into broadcasting in the early 1970s, joining the BBC Radio 4 counselling programme If You Think You've Got Problems, which ran for nearly eight years.[4] She had her own television show on BBC1 in 1973, Let's Talk it Over.[4]

From 1972 to 1976, Greengross was an agony aunt for The Sun, but "felt the letters passed to her were more about titillation than education".[4]

Greengross wrote Jewish and Homosexual, published in 1980, by the

Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, which "led the way towards equality within the British Reform and Liberal movements".[2] Greengross published several sex education books, particularly focused on more marginalised groups, such as Sex and the Handicapped Child in 1980.[2]

Greengross was a founding member and chair of the organisation Sexual Problems of Disabled People (SPOD), and a founder of the Residential Care Consortium.[2]

Selected publications

  • Sex in the Middle Years (1969)[5]
  • Sex in Early Marriage (1970)[6]
  • Entitled to Love: the Sexual and Emotional Needs of the Handicapped (1976)[7]
  • Sex and the Handicapped Child (1980)[8]
  • Jewish and Homosexual (1980)[9]
  • Living, Loving and Ageing (1989), with her sister-in-law Baroness Sally Greengross[10]

Personal life

In 1951, she married a surgeon, Alex Kates, and they had five children.[1]

Greengross had two daughters, Hilary and Polly, and three sons Nick, Richard, and Trevor (d. 1997).

Greengross lived for many years in Hampstead Garden Suburb, before a retirement flat in Regent's Park Road, where she died on 10 October 2012 of pneumonia.[2] She was buried at Cheshunt's Jewish Cemetery.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f "Doctor Wendy Greengross: Champion of the elderly and the disabled". The Independent. 6 November 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/106704. Retrieved 26 November 2017. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. S2CID 220082859
    .
  4. ^ a b c Hayman, Suzie (15 October 2012). "Wendy Greengross obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  5. OCLC 15599
    .
  6. OCLC 16217785
    .
  7. OCLC 2633700
    .
  8. OCLC 13781441
    .
  9. ISBN 0950592072
    .
  10. OCLC 59921113
    .
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