Teare, Robert Donald

Person

Teare, Robert Donald

1911-1979

Born in the Isle of Man, the son of a newspaper proprietor, Albert Hugh Teare, a Manxman who became a member of the House of Keys, and his wife who was the daughter of a Manx farmer. Schooled at King William's College, Isle of Man, where he became head scholar. He prepared for a medical career at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and entered St George's Hospital, from where he qualified in 1938, proceeding to MD in 1948. He became a member of the Royal College by examination in 1937, and was elected a fellow in 1962. He was a founder fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, serving on its council from 1964 to 1967, and being treasurer from 1968 to 1973. He was elected master of the Society of Apothecaries in 1977.

His early steps in pathology was guided by John Taylor at St George's Hospital. Teare became president of the Association of Forensic Pathologists (1961-1962) and president of the Association of Forensic Pathologists (1961-1962), and president of the Medico-Legal Society (1965-1966). He was appointed to a personal chair in the University of London in 1968, and in 1978 the University of Sheffield honoured him with the degree of LLD.

Donald Teare's contributions to pathology, mainly in the field of medico-legal practice, included recognition in 1958 of that curious hypertrophy of the left ventricular muscle which for a time, with Russell Brock's surgical interest, became known as 'Teare's asymmetrical hypertrophy', following Teare's initial description of it in the British Heart Journal. His best known cases were those of Timothy Evens, the 'cleft chin' murder (Martirosoff), the Camb 'porthole' case, and the Podola murder which challenged the 'McNaughten rules'.

He married Kathleen Gracey, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Gracey of Northcote Manor, Umberleigh in Devon, in 1937. They had three sons and a daughter.

Royal College of Physicians