Excerpt from a talk on the history and growth of Williams Syndrome Support Groups. Given by Kit Crawford to the NZWSA National Camp at Paraperaumu in January 1999.
The mystery of Dr. J.C.P. Williams
after whom the syndrome is named, is still unsolved.
Dr. Williams was the Registrar at Greenlane Hospital in Auckland,
New Zealand when he noticed that a number of children coming in for
heart surgery (many of them with supravalvular aortic stenosis)
shared other features in common with each other.
They had similar facial features - they were chatty and outgoing -
rather undersized and appeared to suffer from varying degrees of
mental retardation. He wondered if there could be a syndrome
involved.
He spoke to the cardiac consultants, his Chiefs at the time, and was
given the go ahead to conduct further investigations and a paper on
the subject was printed in Medical journals in 1961. Families still
living in New Zealand who were involved in his research report Dr.
Williams as being a very charming and gentle man.
Dr. Williams worked at Greenlane
until 1964 when he was offered a job at the Mayo Clinic in the USA.
This position was kept open for him, but as he never showed up it
was given to someone else.
Dr. Williams then went to London to work, but when the Mayo Clinic
offered him another post he again failed to appear.
He then disappeared, and his family didn't know of his whereabouts
except that a suitcase was left in a luggage office in London which
was never claimed.
His mother died in 1972 and Interpol traced him to Salzburg.
His sister lived in Rotorua, New Zealand until she died in 1988. Her
son Tom Morgan never met his uncle.
Sir George and Lady Cooper from the UK Williams Syndrome Association
paid a visit to Dr. Williams nephew, Tom when they were in NZ in
1990, but he was unable to shed any further light on his
whereabouts.
The Coopers also rang Sir Brian Barrat-Boye and Dr. Lowe whose names
also appear on the original paper in 1961, but neither knew of any
further news.
When I rang Dr. Lowe after the Coopers had requested that I try to
find out more about Dr. Williams, Dr. Lowe remarked "He was a
brilliant eccentric!!"
By now Dr. Williams would be in his early 70's - is he still alive?!
One wonders???..! "