Obituary: Margaret Caldwell Gray (Dr Maggie Stockwell, MB ChB, DRCOG, DA, FRCA), anaesthetist and singer

Anaesthetics and music were two of the driving forces in Maggie’s life. She was the only daughter of Ronald Stockwell, stereotyper with the Paisley Daily Express, and his wife Maisie, born in a tenement in Paisley before later moving to Elderslie.

With her younger brother Philip she attended The John Neilson Institution, the well-respected school in the west end of the town, and there her love and passion for music started.

She was encouraged to join the choir at Paisley Abbey and had singing lessons at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) part-time, financed by a MacFarlane Scholarship.

Upon leaving school, she attended Glasgow University Medical School, where her training included preregistration posts at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Infirmary in 1969–70.

She often commented that her decision to take up medicine may have been instilled during a two-month spell in Hawkhead Infectious Diseases Hospital, aged five, with scarlet fever.

Her sixth birthday was celebrated there in isolation from her family, who could only wave from outside the building.

In 1970–71 she was a post-registration house officer at Chase Farm Hospital, Enfield, specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology, during which time she seriously considered forsaking medicine for singing full-time.

Her singing teacher at that time suggested that although she had the quality of voice required, the competition with other sopranos might produce difficulties in finding enough work and so continuing with medicine would allow time to use her voice part-time, for pleasure – which she did, to the advantage of the many who heard her.

In 1971, she was persuaded to take up a senior house officer post in anaesthesia at Hillingdon Hospital in Uxbridge, where she remained for three years. While down south, she joined the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, satisfying her passion for singing.

In 1974, she returned to Scotland as a senior registrar in anaesthesia at Glasgow Royal Infirmary before taking up a consultant post at Southern General Hospital in 1978.

In 1983 she returned to Glasgow Royal Infirmary, as consultant cardio-thoracic anaesthetist, where she remained until her retirement in 2006.

During this period she was appointed to the committee of Glasgow and West of Scotland Society of Anaesthetists (GWOSSA) in various roles; member of National Panel of Specialists (nominated by The Faculty of Anaesthetists); elected member of the Scottish Standing Committee of The Royal College of Anaesthetists; elected member of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland; various committee posts with AAGBI and Royal College of Anaesthetists; became president of GWOSSA; and in her later years was appointed president of the Scottish Society of Anaesthetists.

She also sang, with BBC Scottish singers, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, A la Carte Singers, Scottish Philharmonic Singers, Good Shepherd Chorus, Scottish Festival Singers, Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus (as invited augmenter/enhancer), Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, Hyndland Parish Church Choir, these last two until only a few weeks before her death.

It was in Hyndland Parish Church, during Glasgow’s Year of Culture, in 1991 that she was introduced to her eventual husband by an old school friend, and together they made music in many of the groups mentioned above.

Ian proposed on her 50th birthday and they married within the year, in a ceremony in Hyndland Church still talked about today, where more than 400 attended the reception and speeches in the Church Hall before the bridal party left for a family meal.

Numerous other celebrations were enjoyed by the guests in various restaurants in Glasgow’s West End. Her funeral, also in Hyndland Parish Church, was similarly “standing-room only”, with the service shared by Rt Rev John C Christie, who had married them, and Rev Andrew Bradley, a source of comfort in her last weeks.

The pancreatic cancer she was diagnosed with some 18 months before her death heralded a host of complications, some related to the cancer but which interrupted the tremendous treatment she received at the Beatson Oncology Centre, and she eventually died in the hospital in which she had spent 23 years working, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, her choice for some of the treatment and operations.

She leaves her husband Ian, stepsons Crawford and Andrew from his first marriage, brother Philip, sister-in-law Kate, nieces Katy and Alison, many medical colleagues and many lovers of good singing, mourning a well-loved, clever and talented lady who will be much missed.