Aggrey Burke on the day he received his honorary doctorate of medicine from City St George’s, University of London in July 2022.

In his eulogy on Aggrey Burke, Professor Gus John summed up what made him a unique figure in UK psychiatry:

Aggrey Burke’s significance is not only as the first African–Caribbean consultant psychiatrist in the UK National Health Service, but also, with his work on suicide, repatriation and transcultural psychiatry, he revealed important links among mental distress and racial inequality, class disparity and institutional bias.

Born in the mountainous area of St Elizabeth, Jamaica in 1943, Aggrey Washington Burke was one of six children of Isolene Theodora ‘Pansy’ (née Balfour) and Rev. Edmund Newton Burke. Aggrey grew up as a boy tending the family farm. His schooling was peripatetic: his parents attempted to circumvent the poor local provision of literacy and numeracy teaching by sending their children to live with relatives or friends elsewhere in Jamaica. Aggrey attended four different primary schools before winning a scholarship to Jamaica College, a government secondary school, in Kingston. He later described his early school days as ‘great fun’.

His father, a senior government official in charge of welfare in Jamaica, was sent to the UK in the aftermath of the Notting Hill riots (1958) to assist the UK with race relations. Arriving in London with his parents and three of his siblings, Aggrey attended Shene County Grammar School for Boys, where he was the only black pupil, coping with the alienation and isolation that sometimes entailed.

In 1962 he began medical studies at the University of Birmingham, a source of great family pride. There, he thought about entering psychiatry: teachers ‘got me into a frame of thinking and enjoying an aspect of medicine which had so many challenges’. His ideas on transcultural psychiatry began when he saw psychiatrists, whom he admired, sometimes struggling to communicate meaningfully with Caribbean patients yet still establishing a diagnosis. He would think: ‘I’ve picked up something rather different from what you’ve picked up and I see it rather differently.’ He concluded that diagnosis could be distorted by cultural misinterpretation.

After graduation in 1968, Aggrey completed house jobs in medicine and surgery at the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona, Jamaica. From there, he went to Trinidad and Tobago to begin his psychiatric training at St Ann’s Hospital in the nation’s capital, Port of Spain. This experience made its mark on his approach to psychiatry for the rest of his career. Landing as he did only 6 years after the twin-island nation had gained independence from the UK, he plunged into the post-independence fervour with gusto.

Early on he published on suicide, the hospital system and syphilis in patients at Jamaica’s Bellevue (psychiatric) Hospital. Later he looked at young, mentally ill Caribbean people who had been sent back to the Caribbean from the UK, the prevailing thinking at the time being ‘Send them back and they get under the coconut tree and they’ll get better’, as he recalled. He followed up, for around 4 years, 55 returnees who had developed ‘schizophrenia’ in the UK. In the ‘repatriate syndrome’ (a term he coined), some who lacked support on arrival became depressed and suicidal. There was excessive mortality, some retreated to living in the Bush while yet others thrived, particularly women with children who re-established family support. ^{Reference Burke1}

In 1976, Aggrey was appointed senior lecturer and consultant at St George’s Hospital (now City St George’s, University of London). Around that time, he began to make his mark in media interviews and publications on questions of race and psychiatry. Inequitable treatment of Black people, particularly in London at the hands of the Metropolitan Police, constantly drew him into discussions. In 1981, he gained further prominence when he offered support to families who had lost children in what became known as the New Cross Fire. Thirteen Black youngsters died in this fire, which began during a birthday party; arson was suspected. Aggrey travelled across the UK, and to Jamaica, to help the New Cross families. However, his involvement in the public campaign following the fire was more controversial. It heightened his prominence and brought him close to radicals such as Darcus Howe, editor of Race Today. Some colleagues attempted to curtail his campaigning, one going as far as to request that Lord David Pitt, himself a GP who was then working with Aggrey to establish the African Caribbean Medical Society, should ‘rein in’ his protégé.

In 1986, Aggrey co-authored a paper that would denude his career for years to come. His colleague, lecturer and pharmacologist Joe Collier, sought him out because he wanted a Black perspective on apparent racial and gender discrimination that he had uncovered in medical school admissions. ^{Reference Collier and Burke2} The Commission for Racial Equality subsequently investigated, supporting their findings that ‘initial selection of applicants for interview was made by a computer program that gave differential and less favourable weightings to women and ethnic minority candidates’. ³ Burke and Collier were ostracised, and Burke’s career was arguably stifled. His psychiatry service was gradually downsized and, by the time he retired in 2008, he no longer had a support staff or an office.

Aggrey Burke was a quiet and thoughtful lecturer and speaker. He never lost his Jamaican accent, using its lilt and his impish humour to decorate his speeches at many events. His opinions were wise and considered, so he was invited to become involved in many organisations, including the George Padmore Institute, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and various organisations associated with transcultural psychiatry and Black and Caribbean psychiatrists. Almost up to his death he was still involved in supporting the New Cross families.

In recent years he received some recognition for his achievements. In 2019, the Royal College of Psychiatrists named him as one of their faces of Black History Month, and in 2020 he received the College’s President’s Medal. In 2022, St George’s awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science ‘not only as an academic and psychiatrist, but as a pioneering campaigner against discrimination’. The following year he received an honorary Doctor of Medicine from the University of Birmingham, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists established the Aggrey Burke Fellowship to encourage Black medical students into psychiatry.

In his speech accepting his honorary doctorate at St George’s, summing up his life and work, Aggrey recalled his schooldays in London: ‘We had this motto at Shene: “Enrich the Time to Come”. That’s what I’ve sought to do.’ Aggrey died in 2025. He is survived by his sister, Marilia, two nieces and three nephews.