Dr Bill Taylor

Dr William (Bill) Taylor passed away on 5 September 2021 at the age of 83 after suffering from ill-health for a few years.

He was born in Whanganui and attended St Patrick’s College in Silverstream, Upper Hutt, before attending Otago Medical School. In 1965 he was appointed as the first eye registrar at Auckland Hospital at the behest of Dr Calvin Ring who was departmental head and pre-eminent ophthalmologist of the day. The following year, an obviously impressed Dr Ring wrote in his departmental report, “Our registrar Dr Taylor provided great help in arranging and taking part in the teaching activities. Appreciation of his generous help with all clinical matters must also be recorded.” Clearly Bill’s merits were recognised.

In 1967, Bill travelled to London to join the registrar programme at Moorfields Eye Hospital, after which he undertook further training in medical retina with Professor Alan Bird, and surgical retina with Dr Lorimer Fison. He returned to Auckland in 1972 as the inaugural full-time ophthalmic tutor specialist, a post he held for two years. I first came across him as a second-year registrar and all the registrars at the time greatly benefitted from Bill’s enthusiastic ophthalmology teaching. His breadth of knowledge and surgical skills were legendary, especially given that all ophthalmologists were generalists at that time.

Bill revolutionised the department’s teaching programme, cajoling all the part-time visiting consultants to contribute. He instituted a weekly retinal fluorescein angiography meeting and further developed ophthalmic sub-specialties, a trend started by Dr Hylton Le Grice and in retina by Dr Harold Coop. Orbital surgery was Bill’s other sub-specialty.

In 1974 Bill accepted a part-time post as a visiting ophthalmic surgeon at Auckland Hospital, joined Dr George Fenwick in private practice in Mount Street and developed a peripheral practice in Henderson. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed head of the Auckland Hospital eye department replacing Dr Calvin Ring who was retiring.

Bill remained committed to the public system and put much effort into planning an extensive new fit-out of the eye department in the Wallace Block, which continued to house the Department of Ophthalmology until 2004 when it shifted to the Greenlane Clinical Centre. As well as administering the department, Bill continued organising comprehensive teaching programmes for house surgeons and registrars, mostly in his own time. He organised a very successful conference of Auckland ophthalmologists, for which he coerced every consultant to give a presentation, together with Professor Ian Constable from the Lions Eye Institute in Perth. It was a resounding success, academically and socially.

In 1982, I joined Bill to set up the first, private retinal fluorescein angiogram and argon laser facility, which later became New Zealand’s first multi-subspecialty group practice the St Mark’s Eye Centre, later re-named Auckland Eye.

Bill advanced ophthalmology in Auckland, especially in retina, and in teaching and training, paving the way for trainees to obtain their specialty qualifications in Auckland before further sub-specialty experience overseas. Although an excellent surgeon, Bill retired from surgery unusually early, partly because like many graduates from Moorfields in that era, he remained sceptical of intraocular lenses because of the many early failures ophthalmologists had to deal with in those pioneering times.

Outside medicine, Bill was chair of the board of governors of Sacred Heart College (Auckland) and a committed Catholic, providing low-cost eyecare to Auckland clergy for decades. In retirement, both he and his wife Jo were active members of the Remuera Golf Club and regularly travelled to the UK (particularly Scotland) to see family, trace their family history and play golf. Bill also became a keen proponent of long-line fishing from the family bach in the Coromandel.

Bill is survived by his devoted wife of 58 years Jo and their sons William, John and Andrew and daughter Louise.