Sir James Calvert Spence, FRCP MC & Bar (19 March 1892 – 26 May 1954) was an English paediatrician who was a pioneer in the field of social paediatrics.
[1] Captain Spence received the Military Cross (MC) for "conspicuous gallantry" and "devotion to duty" in attending wounded while under fire.
He also joined the medical staff of a day nursery, in West Parade, Newcastle, which had been set up by a local wealthy lady to look after the children of munitions workers.
[6] Spence began the practice, then unique in Britain, of admitting mothers to hospital with their sick children,[7] so that they might nurse them and feel responsible for the child's recovery.
Spence had begun receiving offers of professorial chairs, but declined them all as it would mean leaving Newcastle and the work to which he felt dedicated.
[9][10] Spence always laid stress on the inclusion of the home as well as the hospital in the care of the sick child and throughout his teaching emphasised the preventive as well as the curative aspect of paediatrics.
Spence combined clinical skills with great sensitivity as a doctor and his whimsical charm made him a most attractive personality.
[11] He summed up the practice of medicine as follows: The real work of a doctor is not an affair of health centres, or laboratories, or hospital beds.
[12]The Yellow Brick Road Children's Medical Research Centre at the Royal Victoria Infirmary is officially dedicated to Sir James Spence.
The cost of £5 million was raised entirely from people in the North East of England in less than four years by the North-East Charity, the Children's Foundation.