Kenneth Newton Lloyd

Kenneth Newton Lloyd (“Ken”) was a champion of physical medicine and rheumatology in Wales. Combining vision, forceful personality, and political skills, he created, more than 60 years ago, the first department in Wales to specialise in the treatment of rheumatic diseases. It was an NHS facility, designed to respond to not only the huge clinical demands from the population of Cardiff, with a heritage of heavy industries and physical injuries, but also to referrals of patients with chronic rheumatic diseases from across south Wales. This formed the nucleus for what later became the first teaching centre in Wales for trainees in rheumatology.

Kenneth Newton Lloyd was born in London, the second of five sons of Grace and Ernest Lloyd, an Inner Temple barrister at law. He boarded at Mill Hill School, and then entered the London Hospital Medical College in 1932. He completed house jobs at the London Hospital before further medical training was interrupted by the second world war.

The defeat at Dunkirk prompted Ken to volunteer for service in the Royal Air Force. He was appointed as a medical officer at RAF Tangmere in West Sussex, the home of two Hurricane fighter squadrons, where he remained throughout the Battle of Britain. After marriage to Phyllis in 1941, he was posted to north Africa at the time of Rommel’s north African …