On 31 January 2025, 1958 Beta Club members Elizabeth and David visited the University with Emily Howie, Head of Alumni & Supporter Engagement. Emily has been a great help to Beta Club Presidents, Stuart and Iain, with reunion plans over the years.

Emily led Elizabeth, David and his granddaughter, Breanna, to the huge campus expansion on the site of the old Western Infirmary. First, however, we stopped for a photo by the Botany Building, built at the cost of £19,000 in 1901, which our entire class entered for 8am lectures, 73 years ago.

A new signature Keystone building is under construction, and will complete a hub for teaching, learning and research, which will accompany four state-of-the-art buildings: the JMS (James McCune Smith) Learning Hub, the ARC (Advanced Research Centre), the Clarice Pears Building, and the Adam Smith Business School.

After the campus visit, we joined club members Jim and Isobel Quigley in a Byers Road restaurant for lunch and toasted the Beta Club. Jennifer McBride, daughter of Tom and Margaret, had to call off, because of a winter cold. After lunch, Elizabeth and David joined club members Elizabeth Riddell and Mary Auld for tea on the south side of the city.

The Club has fundraised for many years under the University’s Class Giving Programme, and Elizabeth and David were pleased to deliver the group’s final cheque, made out to The University of Glasgow Trust, earmarked for the Access To Opportunity Fund, to support students who face barriers to higher education. The club’s generous donation comes after the perseverance of members who came together to appoint new signatories for the fundraising account, after the sad passing of Club President, Stuart Parker, in 2023.

Elizabeth and David outside the Botany Building.

 

You can find a history of the 1958 Beta Club detailed by David and Elizabeth below.

Tradition dictated that the new medical class should use the next letter in the Greek alphabet from that used by the previous medical year. Hence, the "1952 – 1958 Beta Club”. The Club’s purpose was to raise funds for celebratory dinners in 1958. A considerable sum had to be gathered since professors and teachers over the whole six years of the curriculum were to be guests; funds were also required to produce a Year Book. Only one in five of those entering in 1952 were women, who were segregated from men in anatomy and laboratory work and in a few other contexts. Men and women also had separate final year dinners in those ancient days (see below):


Menu Card, Women’s Final Year Dinner, Glasgow University Beta Club, 1958

The 1958 class was among the first cohorts to have their clinical training within the recently established NHS. Over their careers, global health was transformed; people survived longer; outcomes of care greatly improved; children grew up healthier; the toll of infectious diseases fell; midwifery became safer; the episteme widened and deepened; pedagogy became more efficient; and, as technology developed, sub-speciality expertise evolved.

The Beta Club class qualified around the time when conscription was being abolished. Male students who had been deferred to attend medical school were consequently obliged to serve two years of National Service in the armed forces, after completing the mandatory two six-month medical and surgical house jobs.

Thanks to our Alma Mater, Beta Club members were well prepared for their life course.

Less than half the class became general practitioners. Popular specialty careers were surgery; medicine; paediatrics; pathology & haematology; and community medicine, followed by psychiatry; anaesthesia; obstetrics & gynaecology, occupational health, and ophthalmology.

The 1958 class was a generation of achievers, not just in terms of academic awards. Many received honours, national recognition, or civil appointments. Accomplishments in the arts, in sports and in other fields continued after retirement. The University produced lifelong learners; a few continued to publish 65 years after graduating.

Thanks to Stuart and Iain, and the support of Glasgow-based colleagues, the dispersed membership kept in touch, doing so via the website and newsletters, although mainly through periodic reunions. The first was held 10 years after graduation, in 1968; the next at the 25-year mark, in 1983 (see photo below):


Beta Club Committee with Professor Ian Donald at 25th anniversary of graduation, 1983 (back row, left to right, Eddie Neville, Iain Ledingham, Elizabeth Riddell, Mary Auld, Stuart Parker, Tom McBride; front row, Morag Bratten, Professor Donald, Margaret Hanlon)

After 1983, reunions took place at 5-year intervals, traditionally in Glasgow, although Barcelona was the venue in 2003. Glasgow University was the site of the 50th, in 2008, when 57 members attended with 45 sending apologies. Subsequent gatherings were held at the University.

John Spence wrote the below poem after the 1958 Beta Club reunion in 1998:

Going Back, by John Spence

Early, I saunter down Byres Road, remembering old days,
Old faces, voices, friends and names, not just of folk.
Cowcaddens, Hillhead, Stobcross, Broomielaw
(Where cargo ships unloaded), Dobbie's Loan.
Later, the people. Slowly, delighted, we pick up the threads,
Recapturing shared joys and worries - and a few regrets.
Good times, bad times, wild nights, hard days.
Catching up, connecting: 'So that's what happened!'
Bearsden, Milngavie, Drumchapel, Canniesburn.
Broken connections heal, mysteries are solved, or not.
Good feelings flow. Not all in sunshine, gradually
We hear of quiet tragedies. In every life ...
Langside, Stobhill, Townhead, Kelvingrove.
Old well-loved buildings where we walked the wards,
Begin to learn - and question. Finding out:
Medicine and life, the joys and pains of youth.
Ibrox and Bellahouston; Pollockshields.
All with their memories. And the deaths of those
Remembered on the hill. Sunlit days, The Cobbler and Glencoe.
Tough days on Nevis. Lost on the Merrick, snow on the Mamores.
Tyndrum, Crianlarich. Fort William, nevermore.
But here and now we draw new strength from being together
Only a short time, then part again. Five years, for ever?
Glasgow Glesca Gleascu.
O dear green place of our growing up.

First published: 7 March 2025

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