Dr Charles James Kirkpatrick Orr
05/01/1916 to 03/10/2005
Place of birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality: British
CRN: 512949
Education and qualifications
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General education |
Charles was born in 1916 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where the family ran a chain of corner stores. They returned to Ireland in 1920, to North Antrim where they were from originally. He initially attended the local primary school in Dunloy and then went on to secondary school at the nearby Ballymena Academy (1929 to 1934). He decided that he would like to study medicine at Queens University Belfast but was disappointed when he realised that he needed to have studied Latin, a requirement to enter medical school at that time. He thus had to spend his last summer at school studying in order to take the Latin examination in September and then enrolled in medicine at Queens in October 1934. He graduated in October 1939. |
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Primary medical qualification(s) |
MB BCh, BAO Queens University Belfast, 1939 |
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Initial Fellowship and type |
FFARCS by Election |
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Year of Fellowship |
1953 |
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Other qualification(s) |
DA (RCP&S), May 1948 |
Professional life and career
Postgraduate career
On graduation from Queens University Belfast, Charles started his medical career as an assistant in general practice in Holywood, County Down, just outside Belfast (January 1940 to July1941). In August 1941 he enlisted as a full time medical officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF) Volunteer Reserve and was posted to Silloth in Cumbria in the north of England. Whilst there he often took the opportunity of flying on the reconnaissance flights of the Coastal Command. At one point the undercarriage of the plane in which he was flying failed and they crash landed but he emerged unscathed. In 1942 he was posted for six months to the Emergency Medical Service Hospital at Pembroke in Wales to act as an anaesthetist. During this posting he attended an anaesthetic course at St Athan Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan which convinced him that this would be his ultimate career choice. He served for two more years in the RAF (in Aldergrove, NI and Gibraltar) before demobilisation in July 1946 with the rank of Squadron Leader.
He was appointed Registrar in anaesthetics at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast in August 1946 becoming Principal Registrar/Tutor the following year. He completed his training in August 1949 when he was appointed specialist anaesthetist/ Senior Hospital Medical Officer to the Mid-Antrim group of Hospitals. This included the Waveney Hospital , Ballymena, the Massereene Hospital, Antrim and the Mid-Ulster Hospital , Magherafelt. The Northern Ireland Hospital Authority did not recognise the Diploma in Anaesthetics as adequate for consultant status and so he was not appointed consultant until he was awarded the Fellowship of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal College of Surgeons, England in 1953. He retired in January1981.
Professional interests and activities
Charles Orr was very much involved in the administrative aspects of the hospital, serving as Honorary Secretary to the medical committee of the Waveney Hospital (1949-1956) and as chairman of the Ballymena district medical society (1961-1962). He was a member of the Northern Ireland Anaesthetists Group of the British Medical Association and was chairman 1957-1958. He developed the anaesthetic services in the Mid-Antrim group and was one of the first consultants outside Belfast to be assigned trainee registrars. In the early days of the NHS he and two other colleagues had to provide anaesthetic services over several hospitals scattered throughout the county. He instituted a number of changes in the hospitals, started pre- and postoperative visits and introduced proper anaesthetic records. He had a stubborn streak and refused to adapt to the more dilute 2.5% thiopentone, continuing to use the more potent 5% solution throughout his career. He retired from clinical practice in 1981.
Other biographical information
Charles was born in the USA in 1916, son of Charles Orr and Sarah (nee McHuey). Both of his parents came originally from farms near Dunloy in North Antrim where the family can be traced back to the seventeenth century.
He had a number of sporting interests. He took up rowing as a medical student and was a member of the Queens rowing club. He was always a keen swinmmer and amateur photographer. Later in life he developed an interest in gardening as well as golf. He married Rita Chestnutt, a science teacher, in 1942. They had three children. Rosemary, the eldest, followed in her father’s footsteps and qualified as a paediatric anaesthetist, Caroline studied medicine and became a general practitioner and finally Ian also became an anaesthetist. Charles was a member of the Ballymena Probus club and was president in 1983. He was a deeply religious man and was Clerk of the Kirk sessions of the West Presbyterian church in Ballymena. He died on the 3rd October 2005.
Author and sources
Author: Joseph A Tracey
Sources and comments:
Based on information from CJK Orr’s self submitted ‘Boulton form’(1988), from information provided by his son, Dr Ian Orr and from his obituary, published in the BMJ. (Orr I, Bali I. ‘Obituary. Charles James Kirkpatrick Orr’, BMJ 2006; 332: 671).