Born in Cork in 1922 and a medical student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Dr Mary Bew joined the British Army on the outbreak of WW II. After a crash course in tropical medicine, in which she excelled, Mary was sent to assist in the Southeast Asia campaign. In India, as a young captain, she met Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Mountbatten, inoculated the Gandhi family and showed a remarkable gift for learning, resulting in her ability to carry out medical examinations in five different languages.
It was in India that Mary met Dr Kenneth Bew, a QUB medical graduate, who had been in the RAF since 1944, serving first in Burma, then in India. They married in India in 1946 and returned to Belfast to set up practice in Grampian Avenue, a street that straddles the Upper Newtownards Road and Holywood Road in East Belfast. Dr Mary Bew worked in the role from 1949 to 1992, becoming a legendary local icon to thousands of patients and to the entire community, where she became known to all as simply, ‘Dr Mary’.
Dr Mary Bew died in July 2023 at the age of 101, survived by her son, Paul, a Professor of Irish Politics at QUB and a crossbench life peer in the House of Lords, a title awarded in recognition of his contribution to the Good Friday Agreement.