Home People Residents Dr. J. K. T. Mills Retires – In Goldthorpe Practice for Nearly 40 Years

Dr. J. K. T. Mills Retires – In Goldthorpe Practice for Nearly 40 Years

November 1959

South Yorkshire Times November 7, 1959

Dr. J. K. T. Mills Retires

In Goldthorpe Practice for Nearly 40 Years

The retirement recently, of Dr. J. K. T. Mills, well known Goldthorpe doctor, brought to an end nearly 40 years service to the locality.

James Kinnison Tulloch Mills (“I’m very proud of my middle names, he says”) was born near Arbroath, in Colliston village,  where his father was the Presbyterian minister.

He was the sixth child in a family of eight, having four brothers and three sisters, and after attending the village school he went to the Arbroath high school for eight years and in his last year at the school he won both the Mathematics and Science Prize and still has the medals. He was also a member of the football team and “a bit of an athlete.”

He became a student of medicine at St. Andrews University Medical ‘School, and graduated in 1918 as a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery, but his career was interrupted by Army service, and he became a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, travelling to France, Germany, East Africa and finally Russia.

He left the army in 1920, and became House Surgeon at the Dundee Royal Infirmary, but after one year he became assistant to Dr. J. K. W. Morris (a former St, Andrew’s man also) in Goldthorpe,

Typhoid Epidemic

He arrived at his new post in October 1921, when an epidemic of typhoid was raging in the area, and he recalls how an emergency hospital had to be set up in a Bolton school to deal with the 40 or so patients.

Dr, Mills, who still retains his Scottish accent, despite his 38 years in Goldthorpe, told our reporter that he had seen a lot of changes since he came “Mostly for the better,” he says. With the nationalisation of the medical services he was relieved of a number of his duties, in Child Welfare and Maternity Clinics, but for many years he has been the Officer in charge of the Goldthorpe St. John Ambulance Brigade.

He was a keen golfer up to a few years ago, and was captain of Hickleton Golf Club, of which he has been a member for 35 Years. On his retirement he was presented with a table model cigarette lighter by the nurses in the district, and he has received numerous gifts from grateful Goldthorpe people.

He says he is now taking it easy and plans to live with relatives in Durham.