Death of academic who saved life of phone box baby

Stephen Medcalf, 70, was a hugely-respected academic who was once described by Iris Murdoch as one of the most brilliant students she had ever encountered.

He will also go down in Lewes history as the man who saved the life of a new-born baby abandoned in a telephone box on a freezing February night in 1983.

His sister Ursula James told the Express: 'He was a very intellectual person and very warm and generous.

'People in Lewes will remember the baby he found in a telephone box in Abinger Place.

'He was walking home in the early hours of the morning when he heard the sound a baby wailing and he found the baby girl on the floor of the telephone box in a brown paper bag with just one blanket.

'He undoubtedly saved her life. She was just a few hours old and wouldn't have made it through the night.'

Mr Medcalf studied at Merton College Oxford in the 1950s where he was praised by his tutor and literary giant Iris Murdoch.

Following several years as a post graduate at Oxford he took the post of a lecturer in English Literature at the recently established Sussex University in 1963.

He spent almost 40 years at the university and was promoted to the position of a reader in English Literature and an Emeritus Reader when he retired in 2002.

Professor Norman Vance, a colleague and friend of Mr Medcalf, said, 'He had an outstanding and brilliant mind but was also someone who had a great gift for friendship and we will all miss him dearly.'

Mr Medcalf lived in a number of different houses in Lewes before settling in his home in New Road, where lived for more than 30 years.

Harriet Wyndam, one of Mr Medcalf's many friends living in Lewes, described him as one of the town's 'most eccentric and brilliant characters'.

She said he was part of the Greek Group, a long-running social gathering of friends who meet at their respective homes in Lewes and read from the works of Homer in its original ancient Greek.

His niece Kate James, said: 'He was one of a kind, an eccentric uncle who rarely attended to himself but was devoted to his family; the kind who would turn up at the last minute, wearing his best waistcoat and clutching the ever-present bulging briefcase with his latest works, books he was reading.'

Mr Medcalf was also a committed Christian who worshipped at St Anne's church and on occasions at St Michael's church in the High Street.

He had suffered problems with his heart in the past and died on September 17 from an aortic aneurysm.

A service will take place at St Anne's today Monday (October 1) at 2pm and a memorial service is planned at a later date at the university.

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