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- As the son of the surgeon Charles Langley Owen and the great-nephew of the eminent ophthalmologist, David Charles Lloyd Owen, it was not surprising that Robin Owen took up eye surgery as a career. He became a consultant ophthalmic surgeon in south London. His mother was Robina Elizabeth Owen née Sinclair.
Born in London on 9 May 1929, Robin was, like his father, educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, where he is recorded as having regularly won the prize for holiday diaries! Following four years at Felsted School, he was awarded a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1947 where he read Natural Sciences and Medicine, before completing his clinical studies at King’s College Hospital, London.
He qualified in 1954 and entered the Royal Army Medical Corps for his National Service, staying on with a short-service commission. After passing the diploma in ophthalmology, he became a senior specialist in ophthalmology at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot with the rank of major.
In 1955, he married Margaret Bennet, the paediatric ward sister at the Kent and Sussex Hospital, whom he met when he was a junior doctor. They had a son and two daughters, the elder of whom was a palliative specialist nurse and the younger a GP in Brighton.
Robin left the Army in 1957 and subsequently held posts in ophthalmology at Southend General Hospital and King’s College Hospital, London, becoming an FRCS in 1960. His experience with the West Indian population in south London led to him being awarded an MD in 1965. The title of his thesis was ‘A study of defective vision of indeterminate pathology in West Indian immigrants living in south London.’ In addition, he published papers on other ophthalmic subjects.
In 1966, he was appointed as a consultant ophthalmic surgeon to the group of hospitals which included Dartford, Sidcup, Lewisham Children’s Hospital and Farnborough hospitals. During this time he also saw private patients at his home. He is remembered by his colleagues in south London as a competent surgeon and clinician with a special interest in squint surgery. A private man with a dry sense of humour, he resisted the advances of the computer age, writing his notes only on the right-side page (recto) in the patient’s folder and insisting that his junior staff do the same. He finally retired in 1995.
He was a churchwarden at his local church, participating in many activities relating to the parish, a keen gardener and an enthusiastic golfer. He managed to combine these latter two interests by creating a nine-hole putting green on his back lawn, and no visit to his home would be complete without a very competitive round of putting! He was particularly proud of his caravan, which he loved to use for holidays, travelling round the country with his family. He was well ahead of his time in recycling, owning a press that converted old newspapers into briquettes for the fire.
Robin died on 15 April 2006 at the age of 77.
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1929 - 2006 (76 years)
