Dr Bill Foreman, Superintendent, Sully hospital

Dr Bill Foreman . Superintendent Sully hospital

Died 19 April 1976. Age 62.

Dr Bill Foreman (left) and Dr Len West walking in the grounds of Sully hospital ( circa 1960s).

 I am indebted to Dr Foreman's daughter, Jane, for providing me with the following  information.:

"A New Zealander by birth, he was known to all as Bill after the first day of the month when bills arrived though his real name was Harold Mason.

Born on 1 December 1913 Bill Foreman was educated at Takapuna Grammar School and Otago University where he won rugby blue for the New Zealand universities.

After house appointments in Auckland he enlisted in the New Zealand Medical Corps and was taken prisoner in Greece while remaining with those wounded who were too ill to be evacuated.

He volunteered to be transferred to a camp where Russian prisoners were dying from typhus, and, in spite of contacting the disease himself, remained there for two years.

He worked tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of fellow British POWs in the Polish town of Cosel.

and when the war ended he was awarded the MBE for his selfless work.

Throughout his life he was known for his great humanity and medical skill, often putting his own life in danger.

Dr. Bill Foreman and Dr. Len West with the team of doctors at Sully hospital.

After the war he trained as a chest physician at the Brompton Hospital.  He passed the MRCP in 1947 and was appointed physician superintendent of Sully Hospital in 1951.

There he was able to guide a team of physicians and surgeons in the control and cure of tuberculosis and then to develop a modern cardiothoracic unit while at the same time ensuring that his own humanity was reflected in the running of the hospital.

He knew all the staff personally and introduced many amenities that made life pleasant for them and easier for the patients and their relatives.

In his later years it was a matter of great sorrow to him to see the hospital gradually broken up and he continued to the last to fight for what he knew was best for his patients.

Bill was a man of great modesty.  He never spoke of his past career, but his eminence in his speciality was recognised by election as president of the Thoracic Society in 1972.

His knowledge of chest medicine together with his common sense and sympathy made him an outstanding colleague, but it is as a loyal and kind friend that he will be mourned by so many.

He bore his final illness with great courage, support by a strong Christian father and by his family, to whom he was devoted. Dr Foreman is survived by his wife and six children. "

Another lifelong friend, Archie Cochrane, added:

“I was privileged to know Bill Foreman for many years.  We met first in London in 1940 on a course for Army medical officers.”

We met again as prisoners-of-war in Salonika in 1941, and I was close to him and his family in South Wales for a long time. 

Throughout this long and varied period his cheerfulness and kindliness meant much to me, as to many others.  He was, I think, the kindest man I have ever known.”

Source: British Medical Journal, 29 May 1976- Obituary Notices  - H.M.Foreman MBE,MB,CHB,FRCP

 Jane Foreman, daughter of Dr Bill Foreman, says:

"  I was really interested to see your web page which features Dad, Dr Bill Foreman, and Len West. Our childhood was much involved with Sully and I've recently seen DVDs of various home movies done by Dad including the annual Sully fete. 

 One of my sisters, Anna Foreman, is a doctor now in South Wales. And Miss Edwards, my father's secretary at Sully is still around. Dad died in 1976 but my mother is still alive and fit at 91. Anna is one of the administers of a trust dad set up for overseas doctors."

I am hopeful that this is goiing to provide some more valuable material on Sully.

Wayne Spencer- electrician -1983

Just stumbled across the web blog on Sully Hospital and thought I would share some of my memories there. Yet another account from a former staff member who remembers his happy experinces working in Sully.



 I worked at Sully as an apprentice electrician for about 15 months between October 1983 and Jan 1985. Can't remember the exact dates sorry. I remember Steve Parker when I was there. I remember first arriving there after being based at Llandough hospital and thinking Oh my god where have they sent me to! It seemed miles from my home in Church Village (in reality only about 20 miles!).



 After a week I discovered that one of the painters (a lad called Ferris whose first name escapes me now, think it was Neil) lived only 5 minutes from my house and we shared a car to work from then on. I have worked at few places before or since with quite the community spirit of Sully hospital. Yes there were arguments amongst the electricians, the fitters and the engineers in charge but the hospital as a whole had a unique atmosphere. There was very much a reciprocal help each other out attitude that is definitely missing from the NHS today. I remember several times going into the canteen after a long afternoon shift and asking what was for dinner to be asked "what would you like?" I spent four months of my time at Sully installing new lighting and power cables in the underground ducts running between the boilerhouse (now gone it seems from the new development pictures) and the main hospital. I'm sure I never saw daylight for at least a week at a time! I wonder if the service ducts still run under the old hospital now it is flats.


They were large enough to walk through in places. The boilerhouse and estates buildings were located to the left of the hospital as you look up the road, just near to the "sheep labs". From Sully Hospital we also had to look after the old Barry Hospitals. This was the best day of the week for two reasons. 1) I wasn't stuck underground in the ducts, and 2) I got to drive the automatic transit van! This was the first automatic I had ever driven and I've never disclosed this before but when I first was asked to get it out from the old bunker it was stored in, I put it in drive instead of reverse and hit the bunker wall! Nobody was about so I gave the bumper a few hits with my hammer and said nothing! When the charge hand asked who bumped the van I said it was like that when I reversed it out!


 By the time I met my wife to be in 1987 I was working at the University Hospital and living in the old Glan Ely hospital nurses home. I met my wife when she moved in there. She was an Occupational Therapy student and when she first came to Cardiff School of OT, her first residence was Sully Hospital! So we both had a connection with the hospital although her memories were not as fond as mine!

Bill Watts- Sully 1956

I have received another email from Ontario,Canda. Bernie Watts sent me the above photograph of his father, Bill, taken with some friends in Sully. He says:: I came across an old photograph of my father with two of his companions and they seem to be convalescing at Sully Hospital in 1956. I thought I would take a look online and try and find out a little about the place when I came upon your website and thought that you may like a copy of the photograph. II understand that the photograph will probably not be of much value in your project but again one never knows what information may one day be yielded from a small item in an ever expanding body of knowledge such as yours. What may be of interest is that my dad was in the Royal Welch Fusiliers at the time (24 years). I have no idea why he was there apart from the fact that he had been quite ill, as you can see his colleagues were both servicemen, so I wonder if it served as a military hospital at one time. My dad is in the middle, the two scans are both of the same photograph, front and back, I am sending the scan of the back to confirm the date when it was taken, Kath was my mum Kathleen (Nee-Devlin), Dads name was William hence Bill. He adds in another email the following information: My father was born in Sarn/Bridgend in Glamorganshire and joined the Army in 1931, he spent time in Gibraltar, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Belgium and France, sometime after the war he was transferred to the School of Combined Operations located in Barnstable (I think) and it was around this time that he became sick. He’d married my mum in 1942, she lived in Hoylake on the Wirral, where he had been stationed during the earlier part of the war and where I grew up. I understand that during his time at the S.O C Ops. He was involved in providing help and assistance in the great flood in North Devon sometime in the 50’s. Unfortunately I have no further information on Sully Hospital, apart from knowing that he was very ill as my mother went down to see him and for her to leave the children would have been significant. I should add that several years later, after the army, in the early 60’s he did have a major operation which at the time, I understand, was quite ground breaking as he had apparently grown a cyst the size of a football on his liver, which was written up at the time in the Lancet or maybe another important medical journal. Perhaps it was related to the earlier problem, I don’t really know, and as my mum and dad have both passed on now I guess I never will. At the time of the operation he was told that the cyst had been caused by some sort of parasite associated with sheep which he had been carrying round, based on its size at the time of the op, since he was a young boy in rural Wales.

Hugh Thorp - Canada

I have recently received an email from a Professor in Canada who started his career as a nurse in Sully: "I was an SRN at Sully from March 1964 until October 1967. I worked in the Operating Theatres for my whole time there. My principal reasons for working at Sully were that I already possessed a Post Graduate Certificate in O.R. Nursing and I wished to obtain my BTA. I was provided with a Council House on Barry Island (103 Phyllis Street) and with the low pay for nurses this was a most inportant consideration in the 1960's. I look back on my time at the hospital with fond rememberance. The Staff and the surgeons were first class and the work rewarding ; particularly the Cardio-vascular surgery which was often on new born infants. My family and I emigrated to Canada in 1967 and both my wife and I enjoyed rewarding careers in Health Care: She as a Supervisor of an Intensive Care at a major Teaching Hospital, and I as an RN, Educator, Hospital Administrator and University Professor. The surgeons, Harley, Thomas and Rosser were all fine men with great skill. " What comes through in all the correspondence I have received from ex staff at Sully is how much they valued their time there and how much they enjoyed working there too.

“Science is measurement” - Dr Len West

Dr Len West ( right) with Dr Hugh Richmond and a radiologist.


I am grateful to Rosie West, daughter of Australian doctor Len West, for providing information on her father, Len West, who played such a pivotal role in pioneering medical research at Sully.

He was at Sully from 1948 until his tragic early death in 1970 from lung cancer at 59 years of age.


Rosie says:
“Like so many doctors of that time he smoked."

She recalls going to Sully on Saturdays while her father attended to work. "I also went to the children's parties."

She remembers meeting Dr Foreman, the New Zealand medical superintendent and Dilwyn Thomas the surgeon.




Dr Bill Foreman (left) and Dr Len West walking in the grounds of Sully hospital ( circa 1960s).


This obituary appeared in the British Medical Journal on 15 August 1970.


“Dr.L.R. West, consultant chest physician, Sully hospital, Penarth, Glamorgan, died on 11 July at the age of 59.

Leonard Roy West, a South Australian from a medical family, was born on 20 May 1911.

He received his medical education at Adelaide University, graduating M.B., B.S in 1935.

After some jobs in Adelaide he came to London to work for his M.R.C.P, which he took in 1937.
He had house physician posts at he Brompton Hospital and King Edward V11 Sanatorium in Midhdurst before enlisting in the R.A.M.C in 1941.

During his military service he was in Gibraltar, and joined the 6th Airborne Division, which landed in France on D-Day. At the crossing of the Rhine he was mentioned in dispatches,

After demobilization he went back to Midhdurst and in 1947 was appointed chest physician to Sully hospital, to which he devoted the rest of his life.

He was a member of many learned societies including the Thoracic Society and the Cardiac Society, and he was elected F.R.C.P. in 1967.

Thirty years of living in Britain had no effects on the Australian characteristics of Len West. He was enterprising, competent and interested in science to an extraordinary degree.



Len West and Bill Foreman with the team of doctors at Sully hospital.


“Science is measurement” was his motto and he never fell short of it, whether it was in building the first tomography apparatus at Midhurst or making the equipment for and performing the first cardiac catheterization in Wales.
Constructing highly sophisticated electronic apparatus for clinical and research investigations were among the many activities t which he excelled, and undoubtedly it was he who laid the foundations of specialized cardio-thoracic work in Wales.
In addition he was a good teacher and lecturer as well as a sound clinician.

Len West will be well remembered by his many friends for his impish humour, for his bravery, which was exemplified during his long and painful illness, and for his outstanding ability as a chest physician, scientist m an engineer.

His memory will extend far outside the immediate area of his work through the many graduates from all pats of the world that he instructed.

He leaves a wife and a son and a daughter.”


This plaque was placed on the building where Dr West and others did experiments on sheep.

Nurse -Sully 1936- 1940

Rosemary West, daughter of the renowned Sully surgeon Len West, has supplied me with a wealth of information about Sully.


Here is a letter from a student nurse who worked there in 1936 and it was published in the South Wales Echo on April 28 2002.


Iris Deli of Tynewydd Rd, Barry wrote:
"Sully Hospital was a place of great hope for so many patients and their families.

Some of the happiest years of my life were spent there.


It was in 1936 age 18 that a lovely lady interviewed me for a position as a probationer nurse called Matron Gould, for whom I had the greatest respect.

After some initial training, I was assigned to a ward where the patients were all young girls in their teens who had come from Glan Ely hospital.

It must have been wonderful for them to come to such a lovely place.


Although most of them were terminal cases, there was always hope and they were the happiest girls I had ever met.

With the introduction of new drugs, many patients recovered.

I nursed a girl who had been in my class at in Gladstone Road School, and, until recently, was an active member of the WRVS.

We worked long hours with split shifts, during which we had to attend lectures and had little remuneration – 19 shillings (95) a month but we were happy and contended in the fact that we were to the best of our ability trying to make life a little it more comfortable for those more uncomfortable than ourselves.

During my three and a half years there, I made many friends with whom I am still in touch.”.