In 1939, Dr William Fyffe Dorward was forty, just too old to be called up. He was a single-handed GP in Dundee, and also the only Police Surgeon for the city. This appointment probably meant exemption for him as the call-up age was extended. The outbreak of the war brought about some major changes in his life and that of his family.
The first change was increase in his workload. This was not in the number of patients seeking his attention. These were still pre-NHS days, and demands on his services were limited by other preoccupations, not least the thought of his fees. Besides, most of the established GPs were older than he was, and still in practice. The sudden rise in work was caused by the need of the huge number of conscripts to be passed as medically fit for military service. Civilian doctors were engaged to deal with this, so he spent part of each week in the recruiting office in Gellatly Street at this task., which continued for some months, until the RAMC was sufficiently up to strength to shoulder the work. Pleas for medical exemption were not frequent ; but he took upon himself the task of helping an Italian family who were threatened with interment. This family ran a grocery business, and had been patients for many years. The son and daughter, both Scottish-born, were spared, but their parents, both now elderly and infirm, who had emigrated to Dundee and still spoke very broken English, were taken away. Fyffe Dorward, well aware that this ordeal might have serious or even fatal results, moved heaven and earth to have their internment cancelled, and was successful.
Preparing his surgery and waiting-room for wartime was not too hard, and consisted in making the windows splinter-proof with sticky tape. Likewise the windows had to be blacked-out at night. This proved to be an easy job. The house in which he and his family lived was old. Every window had huge wooden shutters, long out of use. But when the nails had been removed and the paint eased, they were found to be fully functional.
His car was an essential tool. Petrol was rationed. So he bought a bicycle. But Dundee was not an easy city in which to ride around his practice, so he was relieved when he was granted a small allocation of petrol coupons; but he had to restrict his journeys carefully, and plan his routes for maximum economy. He became expert at combining outings for his family with visits to far-flung patients. He also used every downhill stretch of road to switch off the ignition, and coast in neutral. The biggest triumph was to freewheel all the way from Birkhill to Lochee , in dry road conditions with a northwest wind.
Rationing involved the family larder too. The flower-beds in his front garden now grew potatoes, and his beloved rock-garden and summer-house became a miniature hen-farm. His eldest son, aged eleven, did "war service". He fed and cared for the little flock, including mucking-out the hen-house each Saturday. The daily eggs and occasional fowl made a welcome addition to the strictly-rationed proteins, and the potatoes throve on the hen-manure. Not only that; the lad was sent round the patients in the neighbourhood with his little wooden cart, known colloquially as a "piler", to collect stale bread for the hen-mash. An even more "infra-dig" task was to scour the streets for horse-dung. The locality had jute-manufacturing works all round, and the traffic for these was horse-drawn.
The doctor's household included two resident maids. One of them remained in her blue work-frock in the kitchen all day, but after lunch the other donned a little black dress with with lace at the collar and cuffs, and a white starched apron, to answer the front door bell and show patients to the waiting room. But the war was not far advanced before patients had to find their own way in. The two girls had responded to the call of duty, and volunteered for the ATS. It marked the end of a domestic era; they were never replaced. Three years later came the end of a medical era, with the inception of the National Health Service. Fyffe Dorward and his contemporaries didn't have it easy.
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