Joseph Sheldon

Joseph Harold Sheldon (27 September 1893 - 22 June 1972) was a British physician, surgeon, and gerontologist.

Education and career After education at Bancroft's, a Drapers’ Company School at Woodford, J. Harold Sheldon went to work at the secretarial department of Lloyds Bank. As he approached the age of twenty, he became fervently religious and decided to leave Lloyds Bank and become a Christian medical missionary.

Sheldon's 1961 Report to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board on its Geriatric Service found inadequate hospital services for infirm geriatric patients. He made several recommendations including replacement of some older hospital buildings, appointment of more geriatric physicians, more postgraduate medical education in modern geriatrics, and adequate staffing of all sections of rehabilitation teams for geriatric patients. and his brother Geoffrey Colin Sheldon (1906–1997) became a general practitioner in Reigate.

In 1921 in Newport, Monmouthshire, J. Harold Sheldon married Marjorie Bannister. Their first child, Peggy, was born in 1924. Their second child died at birth. In 1927 they took a trip to the Alps, and Marjorie died, probably from a large pulmonary embolus, while they were mountaineering.

In 1961 on the Isle of Wight, he married Miss Luckett, with whom he had worked for many years. The couple moved to a small cottage in Codsall Wood.

Selected publications

with Hugh Ramage: with Wilfrid Sheldon:

with Hugh Ramage:

with Wilfrid Sheldon: with Herbert Dingle: wit E. A. Freeman: