A RESPECTED consultant who worked at York Hospital for a quarter of a century has died aged 61.

Dr Peter Toomey worked as a consultant anaesthetist and pain physician at York Hospital for 25 years and has died having lost a battle with skin cancer.

Born in Gibraltar, Peter moved to England when he was ten and went to school at Sherborne and then Epsom College before doing his medical training and qualifying from St Mary's Hospital, London in 1982.

He worked as a consultant at Stoke Mandeville Hospital and assistant professor at Oregon Health Sciences University for a year before moving to York to start work at the hospital in 1995.

At York he was part of a team who set up a renowned multidisciplinary pain clinic that includes an interventional pain management practice offering spinal injections and radiofrequency procedures, including spinal cord stimulation to people struggling with debilitating back pain.

He met his wife, Anna, through a friend in 1982 while she was working as a ward sister.

The couple, who moved to live in Huntington Road, have three sons, Luke, 35, Robert, 34 and Edmund, 29.

In his spare time, Peter had a pilot’s licence and loved flying, but also enjoyed sailing which led him to work with the Jubilee Sailing Trust. The trust helps children and young adults with disabilities to learn to sail and it was something Peter was passionate about.

Back in 2000 when Yearsley Pool was under threat of closure Dr Toomey was one of those campaigning to keep it open, writing in The Press at the time: ‘Swimming is very effective in reducing the disability from chronic low back pain which a large proportion of the community are affected by. If access to swimming facilities is reduced the number of swimmers will fall and down will come the health of the community’.

Anna said Peter was a great dad. She said: “He loved being with the boys, teaching them to ski and they cycled together. We spent a lot of our family holidays going back to Gibraltar when his parents were alive.”

There will be a cremation service at York Crematorium at 12.20pm on Thursday (May 28) which, under the current social distancing guidelines, will be limited to ten people, but Mrs Toomey said that many of her husband’s friends and colleagues plan to line the roadside to pay their respects.