Tom Butler obituary
My friend Tom Butler, who has died of lymphoma after a short illness aged 73, was a former head of NHS mental health services in inner-city Manchester.Alongside his career in social work and mental health, Tom was a historian of social policy in the UK and author of several books, including Mental Health, Social Policy and the Law, published in 1985.As a young social worker, he pioneered the use of computer databases to improve child protection while working for Berkshire social services.He was born in Gloucester to Irish parents, Margaret (nee Bolger) and Patrick Butler, a draughtsman in the aircraft industry.Tom attended St Peter’s Roman Catholic junior school in Gloucester, where we first met.
Opposite the school was Horton Road psychiatric hospital, an old Victorian “lunatic asylum”.During break times we would watch patients walking in the grounds, and in our ignorance, conjure up lurid schoolboy tales about what they might be suffering from, yet even at a young age Tom seemed more interested in the fact that they were suffering.When he came to write the history of these bleak institutions in his 1985 book, it was no surprise to find an image of that asylum on the cover.Tom was part of a generation poorly served by the 11-plus system.At St Peter’s secondary modern there was no sixth form.
He had to do A-levels at Gloucester City Technical College.From there, he flew academically: a degree in social sciences at Middlesex Polytechnic, followed by an MA at Durham University and later a PhD from Manchester University.After a decade in social work convinced him that clients with mental health issues were being failed, he took on a series of roles in the NHS, and by the 1990s was managing the provision of mental health services in Manchester.There he gave more control to clinicians and created innovative partnerships with social services and community groups.A relocation to the north-east to work for Northumberland NHS Trust helped him through a difficult period in his life when his wife Marion (Young, nee Smith), whom he had married in 1979, died suddenly in her 40s.
Tom retired in 2006 and moved to Lavenham in rural Suffolk with his second wife, Sue (Trott, nee Davies), whom he had met on a walking holiday in Andalucía and married in 2002,He learned to play the saxophone and piano, loved to cook and was a wonderfully comic storyteller,Sue was a long-term cancer patient and predeceased him in 2020,At her insistence that he “find something to do” with himself, Tom took up the unlikeliest of pursuits: sailing,Trained by an ex-SBS marine, he eventually made both the transatlantic crossing and only last year – in what proved to be his last hurrah – the treacherous circuit of St Kilda.
He is survived by his older sister, Betty.
Tom Butler obituary
My friend Tom Butler, who has died of lymphoma after a short illness aged 73, was a former head of NHS mental health services in inner-city Manchester.Alongside his career in social work and mental health, Tom was a historian of social policy in the UK and author of several books, including Mental Health, Social Policy and the Law, published in 1985. As a young social worker, he pioneered the use of computer databases to improve child protection while working for Berkshire social services.He was born in Gloucester to Irish parents, Margaret (nee Bolger) and Patrick Butler, a draughtsman in the aircraft industry. Tom attended St Peter’s Roman Catholic junior school in Gloucester, where we first met
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