Abstract
Roy Palmer was born in Peterborough but spent much of his childhood in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He returned to the UK following the death of his father and, after school, read medicine at the London Hospital Medical College at a time when Francis Camps was the professor and ‘Taffy’ Cameron the senior lecturer in forensic medicine. In those enlightened days, a course of lectures in forensic medicine was not only part of the undergraduate curriculum but the lectures were well attended. After qualification and junior hospital appointments at St Margaret's Hospital, Epping, he entered general practice on the borders of Hertfordshire and Essex.
Whilst in general practice, his interest in the law and his lack of interest in physical exercise (a favourite aphorism being ‘Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes’ [Robert Maynard Hutchins, American academic]) led him to read for the external LLB degree of London University. In the course of so doing he was appointed an Assistant Secretary (now a medicolegal adviser) to the Medical Protection Society (MPS) in 1973. He completed the law degree and went on to read for the bar, being called by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in 1977. In 1985 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of the MPS and, in 1989, Secretary and Medical Director. During 27 years of service at MPS he saw great changes in the medicolegal scene and the development of specialist practitioners in the field of legal aspects of medical practice.
He left the MPS in 1999 and pursued other forensic interests. After some medicolegal consultancy work for the Cayman Islands Government, he was appointed an Assistant Deputy Coroner in Inner South London, based in Southwark. In 2000 he was appointed Deputy Coroner in West London, relinquishing that appointment when, in 2001, he was appointed HM Coroner for the Southern District of London (comprising the four London Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon and Sutton). Since 2002 he has also been Deputy Coroner to the City of London. If only he had been better capable of recognizing tissues under the microscope, he might have enjoyed a career in forensic pathology!
He has served as President of the Section of Clinical, Forensic and Legal Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine, as President of the Medico-Legal Society and as President of the South-Eastern England Coroners Society. Currently he is Honorary Medical Secretary of the Coroners Society of England and Wales and chairs its Medico-Legal Committee, serving inter alia on the Coroners Advisory Group of the Ministry of Justice and participating in the Ministry's training programmes for coroners. He is a foundation Fellow of the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine and serves on one of its committees.
Apart from work, he is President of The Society for Relief of Widows & Orphans of Medical Men (a medical charity founded in 1778) and has just completed a term as Chairman of the Livery Committee of the Society of Apothecaries of London. His extracurricular activities include attending classical music concerts and opera.