
From: Robert Brown <ROBERTHBROWN@compuserve.com>

Brethren,

I finally had time to visit the Telegraph's web site and read the article
concerning Doctors who are Masons.
This is a closed list, so I think there is no copyright infringement by
reproducing the article here.  Please remember, though, that this article
is (probably) copyrighted by the Telegraph, Saturday May 31 1997.


***********************************
The doctors who wear the aprons

The medical profession has traditional links with freemasonry _and now
MPs are examining whether such links should be brought into the open.
But does it matter if your doctor is a mason?  Matthew Gwyther reports

Alexander Fleming was in. Edward Jenner was "on the  square". CG Jung
knew the right handshake, and Dr Arthur Conan Doyle wore the apron for
extra-culinary use. Even Dr Joseph Guillotin, inventor of the biggest
scalpel in history, rolled up his trouser leg.

Freemasonry has always been popular among doctors, and non-masons in the
profession have tended not to pry too deeply, or make public statements
about masonic influence. But Colin Rayner, a senior consultant plastic
surgeon at University Hospital, Selly Oak, in Birmingham, believes the
time is ripe for change. Mr Rayner has worked in the NHS since 1964, and
is a former chairman of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons
Ethical Committee. Now in his late fifties, wealthy and coming to the
end of his NHS career, he has less to lose by voicing his worries. =

"It's an incontrovertible fact that some consultants and senior health
service managers are freemasons," he says. "It is also commonly believed
by those of us who are not masons that these people lend assistance to
each other." What examples did he have of this? "I've sat in one meeting
where the discomfiture of one person resulted in immediate closure of
the subject and the issue remained unresolved. It's the potential
secrecy and unknown effects that are objectionable. It's in the
interests of masons to dispel suspicion that their needs on occasion may
override the interests of patients or colleagues." =

Mr Rayner - who declined to name any names - wants the NHS to establish
a publicly available register of masons, similar to that recommended
recently by the Home Affairs Select Committee for the police,
magistrates, judges and crown prosecutors. Jack Straw, as Shadow Home
Secretary, said that Labour would make membership of the masons a
"declarable and registerable" interest.

The new Government has yet to draft legislation relating to the masons,
but inevitably the Home Office will face increasing demands for more
openness.

The pressure for change comes at a time when the masonic movement - on
the surface at least - istoying with glasnost. This began in the early
Eighties, shortly after the publication of Stephen Knight's sensational
book, The Brotherhood, which laid bare the structure and organisation of
the masons.  Knight devoted a mere two out of 300 pages to the medical
profession, but included a reported acknowledgement from the late Baron
Porritt (father of Jonathon Porritt), past president of the British
Medical Association and a mason, that when it came to medical career
prospects and masonry, "it would be hard to deny some people have not
been helped".

Journalistic inquiries to the Freemasons Hall, the HQ of the United
Grand Lodge of England, situated in Great Queen Street in Covent Garden,
are referred to John Hamill, librarian and curator of its museum. Hamill
confirmed that there are about 350,000 masons in England and Wales,
spread across 8,650 lodges. The numbers are down on 30 years ago. There
are no precise figures for doctors, but he said that the medical lodges
were experiencing "a dry period for new candidates.  Doctors just don't
get the time to follow outside interests these days." The fact that more
than 50 per cent of students entering medical school are now women may
have something to do with the decline.  Ladies' Nights aside, there is
no place for females in mainstream masonry.

The masons are big donors to medical charities. A sum of =A3500,000 went
recently to the Macmillan Nurses Scheme, and the masons are also the
largest single benefactor of the Royal College of Surgeons, said Hamill.

When asked if he would put Rx in touch with some masonic doctors, and
provide details of lodges in London teaching hospitals where the
movement has traditionally been strong, he readily agreed. But nothing
happened. Four subsequent calls to Hamill went unanswered.

Indeed not much of the masonic glasnost seems to have rubbed off on the
medical profession. Trying to get a medical brother to admit to
membership is tricky, and even non-masons are reluctant to talk openly
on the subject.

When St Thomas's Hospital in London, lodge number 142, emerged as the
victor - the favoured site - after its bloody merger with Guy's in 1993,
there were grumblings that masonic connections may have influenced the
result. Interestingly, St Thomas's has a special and long-established
relationship with the Metropolitan Police. It is just across the river
from the House of Commons, and less than two miles from Whitehall and
Buckingham Palace.  These factors are all said to have played a part.


Dr Bob Knight, a senior consultant physician at Guy's, says: "It is
extremely difficult to know for sure if masonry played a part but some
of us certainly suspected it. How can you prove anything? They  are so
secretive and it's certainly not the done thing to ask someone outright
if they are a mason. I can think of instances where masonic connections
probably played a part in the appointment of some doctors at Guy's. One
well-connected individual was awarded a job when the hospital would have
been much better served by the other chap who was far more able."

"It's difficult to know about St Thomas's," admits another consultant
physician, from Queen Mary's Hospital at Roehampton in west London.
"There seemed to be jobs that materialised for nice, clubbable chaps who
were never going to be world leaders, although I don't think anyone
really bright has ever been held back because they were not a mason.
Tommy's won out over Guy's because they're skillful political
operators."

When I rang a senior St Thomas's consultant at home, after a long pause
he admitted that he'd been initiated around five years ago, but to
another lodge, not the one at St Thomas's which, these days, he said,
was mainly made up of non-medics. Wasn't the initiation, with its
daggers, blindfolds and bared breast, rather extraordinary? "A bit
extraordinary, yes. But I cannot talk about that." What is it all about
then? "It's just a social club that has dinner four times a year," he
said. Did he think that someone's masonic membership or lack of it could
influence an appointment? "No. The nature of appointment committees
these days is such that you could never fix appointments." So why was
there a degree of resentment about it? "There's a degree of paranoia. It
could be construed as something sinister, but it's not."

Masonic medics have been forced to drop their surgical masks over the
demise of the Royal Masonic Hospital in Hammersmith, west London. The
60-year-old institution ran into dire financial difficulties in the
early Nineties and the Charity Commissioners called in Coopers & Lybrand
as receivers. Although the  hospital was established to treat masons and
their dependents, fewer than 10 per cent of fees were coming from those
sources.

A report by Ashe Lincoln QC found "the greatest laxity in the general
administration of the hospital and [an] especially chaotic position in
regard to financial matters". Bill Hunter was the troubleshooter sent in
by Coopers to try and sort out the mess. "They were bolshie bastards,
embroiled in masonic politics," he says. "If they had stopped fighting
among themselves and looked at the private health care market carefully,
it may have survived."

The Art Deco building in which the hospital was housed was snapped up by
a Mayfair property company for conversion into luxury apartments.

In the absence of any suggestions from Freemasons Hall, a call was made
to Dr Sidney Emerick, an Assistant Provincial Grand Master to the Grand
Lodges of Essex. The 77-year-old retired GP from Chelmsford was happy to
talk. He was initiated in 1949 and says he's thoroughly enjoyed it.
"It's a hobby, a club." Not like a golf club, though. At a golf club you
don't have a noose put around your neck when applying for membership,
nor are you threatened with "having [my] throat cut across, my tongue
torn out by the root and buried in the sand of the sea at low-water
mark" for divulging clubhouse secrets [a procedure which was abolished
in 1987] at the 18th tee . "No. It is different from a golf club," he
concedes. "You're concerned with the moral, spiritual and charitable
effects of what you do. The ritual is the cement that binds us
together."

If freemason doctors are merely members of a club of like-minded people
after moral betterment then it has one of the worst public relations
problems since the Spanish Inquisition. As an organisation it needs more
than John Hamill to sort out its image problems. It needs a flotilla of
Tim Bells.

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I wrote to the Tlelegraph that the last paragraph says it all.  Also, if
we are so all powerful and secret, how is it that they always can find
out who to call to ask about us and where we meet?  These "secret
conspiracies to control the world" are so very silly.  There is the
almost universal complaint that "The xyx (substitute whatever you like
for xyz) are secretly running everything."  I am tired of it.  What I'd
like to know is if there has been any followup to this article?  Any UK
masons care to comment?

Frat,
Bob Brown, Past Master Garden City Lodge Newtonville MA


