Obituary - Kathleen Goff

Kathleen Goff, a former secretary at St Mary’s, died on 30 July 2012. Nigel Palmer, formerly Librarian at St Mary’s pays tribute to his colleague:

“Katy, as she was known, spent virtually all her working life at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School (now St Mary’s Campus) from 1953–92, as secretary to four successive heads of the Bacteriology Department, Professors Robert Cruickshank, Robert Williams, Alan Glynn and Charles Easmon. Cruickshank was the immediate successor to Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin and Katy was a great friend of Fleming’s widow Amalia, who had at one time been imprisoned in Greece for her outspoken, left wing views in the time of the Colonels.

During these 39 years, apart from her work in a busy department, Katy made a great contribution to medical school life by conveying her love of art to its students and staff.

She served as secretary to the Medical School Arts Committee from 1990 until her death and was a member of the Hospital Arts Committee, which aimed to bring about an enhancement of the environment within the school by adorning its previously bare corridors, staircases and function rooms with a variety of paintings and other works of art.

A bas relief cut in stone of the school building by Tim Metcalfe honouring Sir Alexander Fleming was commissioned, as were two large murals in the entrance foyer, one by Jacqueline Rizvi displaying student activities- both sporting and artistic-, the other by Faye Carey, recording four past famous St Mary’s scientists. In 1995 murals were commissioned for two alcoves in the building by Jacqueline Rizvi, depicting aspects of research in haematology and genetics.

Katy’s unique achievement, however, was to organise single handedly around 200 lunch time art lectures from the early 1980s to 2012. These lectures were funded by the Hospital Special Trustees (later Imperial College Healthcare Charity) with support from the Medical School (later Imperial College Faculty of Medicine).

The list of speakers reads like a Who’s Who of the art world, many of them returning to give further talks. Speakers included June Mendoza- portrait painter of the Queen and Queen Mother; Robert Hamilton and James Hart Dyke- war artists and Michael Kauffman -Professor of Historical Art at the Courtauld.

Although she retired in 1992, Katy remained a familiar face on the arts scene at St Mary's. She was a regular worshipper at Westminster Abbey and had a circle of friends in Covent Garden, where she lived. She will be greatly missed in all these places.”