Dr Eddie Adams joined the NHS to do research work at King’s College. “There were other students from the Caribbean, one was working and one was a student. I was homesick for home all the time. As soon as I was qualified I got my first job in the NHS at King’s College Hospital in 1964, but at the end of 1963 I was doing locum work for King’s College. I did casualty and venereology. I was anxious to work. I was feeling good. It was 8 to 12 hours per day and I was paid £8 to £12 per month.”

John Parboosingh found the training process “very similar to what I’d left in high school in Kingston and the standard of education in Kingston at the time was extremely high and so
I didn’t get any shocks at all. I felt quite comfortable and quite confident in my ability to learn.

“The first year was very much classroom and laboratory work. By the second or third year it was anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, so this was more human orientated. Patient contact started in the fourth year … Nurses and physicians were extremely kind to us. I think I had no experience of prejudice. In fact I think those who came from overseas including other Commonwealth countries in those days were very well looked after.”

Like her husband, Jean Parboosingh found that lecturers treated the Caribbean students very well. Patients too “when we were training were very

helpful to students and were very pleasant to us.”

Dr Stanley Moonsawmy was “very anxious and apprehensive in the beginning because I didn’t know what to expect in the educational system. One or two students were very accommodating

Dr Eastmond at Trinity Road surgery, 1975

and they would approach you and ask where you’re from and start a conversation.

“A few became quite friendly … but the vast majority in my class were either middle or upper class and sort of looked at you as an odd foreigner in the class and rarely socialised with me. There were one or two exceptions … a young English chap from Lancashire and he had come up in a trade union family and had a wider view of the world rather than the old empire colonial view. There was a very active West Indian student association including a West Indian calypso band, cricket teams, so those of us like myself who played cricket had social and sports activities of our own.”

Dr Victor Eastmond worked as a London Transport guard for a year, then decided he would pursue his initial desire to go into dentistry: “I did a course in radiography at the Royal Free Hospital in London and was offered a job at the same facility when training was completed in December 1969.”

Dr Anthony Lewis describes himself as ‘trailblazer’ because there were no other Caribbean students on his course.
However “after that year … a lot of Caribbean students started to come and all of them started to look to me as a big brother. … The first year I did physics. In 1963 I actually entered the dental school itself and I got my first diploma, from the Royal College of Surgeons of England in November 1967.”

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