Obituary: Professor Sir John Stallworthy

YOUR obituary of Professor Sir John Stallworthy (by Professor Gordon Stirrat, 30 November), while giving the outlines of a distinguished career, writes Dr Christine Carpenter, fails to mention the extraordinarily charismatic effect that he had on the mothers whose babies he delivered while he was at the Radcliffe Infirmary: so much so that one eminently respectable lady, who had missed out on this experience, was heard to say, 'Oh, I do wish I could have a baby with Dr Stallworthy.'

Women who had given birth to 'Stallworthy babies' and then moved away would not uncommonly go back to Oxford for subsequent births, which is how I myself and my younger brother came to be born in Oxford.

I was always led to believe that, in being a 'Stallworthy baby', I had had a uniquely privileged start in life.