Edward Lowbury

Edward Joseph Lister Lowbury OBE FRSL (12 December 1913 – 10 July 2007) was a pioneering and innovative English medical bacteriologist and pathologist, and also a published poet.

Edward Lowbury was born in Hampstead to the recently naturalised Benjamin William Loewenberg (of Latvian-Jewish background) and the Brazilian-born Alice Sarah Hallé (of German-Jewish origin) in 1913.

His father was a medical doctor and Edward’s middle names were chosen in honour of the surgeon Joseph Lister who had done so much to reduce post-operative infection.

Through clinical trials Lowbury confirmed previous work showing that specialist positively pressurised dressing rooms reduced infections.

[4] He documented treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, noting that the development of carbenicillin resistance used a single mechanism which conferred protection against a range of antibiotics.

He further showed that overuse of a new antibiotic led to increased staphylococcus resistance, and that a subsequent reduction in use reversed the effect.

He also published regular collections of poetry: Time for Sale (1961), Daylight Astronomy (1968), Green Magic (for children, 1972), The Night Watchman (1974).

Following his retirement he continued to live (and write) in Birmingham until the death of his wife in 2001 and his deteriorating eyesight made it necessary to move to a nursing home in London.

Pride of place goes to the nine publications from Roy Lewis' Keepsake Press, some quite substantial, such as Poetry & Paradox (1976) with its 19 poems and introductory essay, or Birmingham!

Birmingham printers who used Lowbury’s work include F.E.Pardoe (The Ring, 1979) and David Wishart, whose Hayloft Press published a number of folded cards between 1987-97.

Standing apart from literary fashions, he has a place among those of any age who continue to be read for having given lyrical expression to a striking or moving thought in plain and concise language.

In the latter part of his career, Lowbury had given a number of lectures on literary themes to learned societies; these were eventually collected, along with a few essays, in Hallmarks of Poetry (University of Salzburg, 1994).

On a much smaller scale, he gave an account of his father’s former patient, the avant-garde composer Bernard van Dieren, in one of his "Apocryphal Letters".