Saul Keidan made a lasting and significant contribution to paediatrics in the 1960s as a consultant and leading figure in oncology at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. A new publication, A Book for Saul, captures Saul’s life on and off the ward before his sudden and untimely death in 1966 at the age of only 47. Here, his daughters Lois and Jane Keidan share more about their father, the book, and his medical career in Liverpool, including his formative years at the University of Liverpool.
Lois Keidan
I was only 8 when Saul died so don’t have so many of my own memories of him and mostly know him through what my mother and others have told me. In putting together A Book For Saul and receiving many touching responses I now vividly see for myself just what an extraordinary man he was, how great his impact on others was, and how much I have missed and missed out on him.
His death in 1966 was widely mourned by his patients, colleagues, the medical community and his many friends in Liverpool and beyond.
At a memorial event held for him by his friends at Liverpool Shakespeare Society he was described as 'a great son of Liverpool – one who was proud of his native city and especially its medical school'.
The tribute went on “All of us with whom he came in contact received from him something which is now part of ourselves, and in a very real sense his achievements and ambitions will be carried forward by those who were his colleagues and friends.”
These sentiments are echoed by his former student and colleague Professor David Weatherall who wrote to my mother in 2013, “I remember Saul as one of the most gifted doctors and delightful personalities that I have ever come across…(his) influence has remained with me throughout my career”.
Saul was born in Sheffield in October 1919, where he was raised by his mother Jane along with his brother David and sisters Sophie and Gertie. His father, also Saul Eli, was an assistant traffic manager at a steel works and died of Spanish flu before Saul was born.
The family moved to Liverpool when Saul was young, where he was educated at St Margaret’s School and Liverpool Institute before attending Liverpool School of Medicine where he received numerous awards and prizes. He served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in West Africa during the war and then returned to Liverpool in 1947 to take up the role of Resident Medical Officer at Alder Hey.
The Class of 1942, Saul's graduating class
In 1952 he met Olive Tulloch at a party in central Liverpool and they married a year later. In 1955 Saul was awarded a fellowship by the British Empire Cancer Research Centre in Boston, USA.
On returning to Liverpool, Saul and Olive plunged themselves into the cultural and social life of the city as well as making their mark in their respective professions, Olive as a psychiatric social worker and lecturer at the University of Liverpool and Saul as Consultant Paediatrician at Alder Hey and Lecturer in Child Health at the School of Medicine.
In 2025, almost 60 years after his death, I created the publication, A Book For Saul, as a long overdue tribute to him. I have produced books of my mother, Olive’s, writings and artworks since her death in 2019, but I realised that I had never looked at Saul’s life in such a way or compiled the photos, documents and other mementos of him that Olive had so carefully kept all these years and that my sister Jane and I are now the custodians of.
Olive and Saul Keidan with Mrs Coult at a Shakespeare Society event
A Book for Saul contains almost everything we have and that we know about him - his family history, his childhood and young adulthood, his war years, his marriage and family life, his amateur dramatics, his distinguished career, and the many tributes that were paid to him on his death.
I have placed printed copies of A Book for Saul with Liverpool Records Office, Bluecoat archives and Liverpool School of Medicine, as well as distributing digital copies to other archives and to friends, family and colleagues. The response has been lovely and extremely moving.
For some the book paints a portrait of a Liverpool life well lived and a peek into a now lost world. For others, who knew and loved my father as children, it brings him back to life and reminds them of how caring and generous he was as a man and as a doctor.
One friend wrote “I so remember your dad… he’d come and check on me each day when I had a nasty kidney infection, not so easily treated then… Mum had bought me a large dolls house from some junk shop which she put on a trolley so it could be wheeled to my bedside and occupy me. Each week your dad brought me a new piece of furniture and such laughter when he brought me a loo!!”. And another said “It is such moving reading for me as I have very good memories of your dear father - both at St Anthony's Road and during my 5 week stay in Alder Hey when I scalded myself aged 10. I loved it when he popped into the ward to see me. He was a dear and brilliant man".
Jane Keidan
I was only 12 at the time of my father’s sudden death. Although I was getting to know him, I am sadly unable to paint a picture of his life as a doctor. I don’t know why he chose Paediatrics and specialised in the newly emerging field of Oncology, nor why he was the visiting Paediatrician for the Isle of Man - although I do remember that after one visit there he brought me home a Manx (tail-less) kitten which we called Kelly.
I know he was much respected in the field of Paediatrics and Oncology and held in high regard at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. I worked as a consultant Haematologist, but do not recall whether his medical career inspired me in this choice. Indeed, I was rather more influenced by his exploits in Amateur Dramatics and auditioned for a place at drama school. Luckily, I was not successful so, as 'second best', I read Medicine at Oxford.
Saul and colleagues
My medical training was made very special as one of my father’s students from Liverpool, Professor Sir David Weatherall, was now the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and acted as a kind and wise mentor there and throughout my medical career. Inspired by my father, I did arrange to do my student attachment in Paediatrics at Alder Hey and followed this with a junior doctor job there on his old ward D3 where I experienced how much he had been loved and admired.
Whilst my father was a key figure in the early development of Paediatric Oncology, which is noted for its dramatic successes today, it is his humanity and bedside manner that were remembered by his colleagues and that, surely, is the best medical legacy you can leave.
From an outstanding undergraduate career he became a clinician of wide experience and great wisdom. These qualities he was always willing to share. But even more than his professional ability we shall recall his friendliness. He was always quiet and gentle with sick children, patient with anxious parents and tolerant of less tolerant colleagues. He might criticize faults but never people; he had a fund of amusing anecdotes which he recounted with relish, but he never made a joke at anyone’s expense except occasionally his own; and he followed with genuine interest the careers of junior colleagues who had worked with him. Paediatrics is the poorer for his passing.
Saul’s obituary in the British Medical Journal, November 1966.
Saul Keidan 1919 - 1966
With thanks to Lois and Jane for sharing these memories and anecdotes with us, and for the copy of A Book for Saul, available at Cedar House. Learn more about Liverpool School of Medicine alumni, or share your own story, over on School of Medicine Alumni Community.