The Queen's College Record 2023

JOHN MOULD
Obituaries
John Mould grew up in Stroud. He came up to Queen’s as
an 18-year-old in 1947 to read medicine. Those were heady
days to be an undergraduate. Like so many who came
up after leaving school in those postwar years, John had
the good fortune to spend his time among former service
men who were resuming their academic careers following
demobilisation; and were determined to make the very most
of them both intellectually and socially. John was caught up in that lively and exhilarating
milieu. He joined the newly energised Eglesfield Musical Society and Eglesfield Players.
He remained proud of having played Mr Boniface the innkeeper in one of the first
(he claimed the first) modern productions of Farquhar’s great comedy The Beaux
Stratagem. He rowed in the College Eight that achieved four bumps in Trinity 1949.
During vacations he travelled through Europe with College friends. In the summer of
1949, he cycled from Stroud to the Scottish Highlands for a tour of the mountains, lochs,
and glens with another Queen’s contemporary, the late Harvey McGregor.
John completed his medical training in London at University College Hospital in the
early 1950s before he undertook national service. He used to say how fortunate he
was to have done so, since had he gone straight into the army after Oxford, as a
man of Stroud he would probably have joined the Glosters and found himself at Imjin
River during the Korean War. As it was, in the mid-50s John was commissioned into
The Rifle Brigade and spent two years as a medical officer in East Africa and Malaya
(as it was then known). These were challenging postings for the Brigade, and John
formed lifelong friendships amongst his fellows.
Returning to civilian life saw John resume his medical career at Northampton General
Hospital. There he met and fell in love with a theatre sister, Dorothy Funge. John and
Dorothy were married at Dallington in August 1959, a happy union of 63 years until
Dorothy’s death in her 91 st year in March 2022. There were five children and later,
many grandchildren.
Meanwhile, John had returned to Stroud to take up general practice. His lifelong
commitment to the National Health Service was a commitment to his local
community. In the early 1970s, as senior partner he guided the practice as a founding
member of the newly opened NHS Health Centre in Beeches Green, where John
remained until his retirement in the early 1990s. As with many GPs of his time, he
also undertook clinics at the local community hospital, Stroud General, and the
Maternity Hospital. During the 1970s he trained in psychiatry and undertook clinical
work at Coney Hill Hospital in Gloucester.
John had a lifelong interest in politics and social affairs, stimulated in no small part
by his friendship during vacations while at Queen’s, with the celebrated social and
116 The Queen’s College | College Record 2023