A general medical practitioner in Glasgow for more than 40 years, Dr Jack E Miller made a huge contribution to the city’s medical and Jewish life.
Educated at Hillhead High School and Glasgow University, he went into general practice in 1946, after two years as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He kept his initial E (for Elius, an unusual spelling) to distinguish himself from other local namesakes.
He immediately became active in the city, co-founding the Glasgow Marriage Guidance Bureau in 1946 and Scottish Marriage Guidance Council in 1948. He was a member of the Scottish Conciliation Committee of the Race Relations Board from 1967-73.
He started communal life as founding chairman of Glasgow Young Zionists in 1946, and sat on a 1950 pilot committee to create a Jewish day school. Calderwood Lodge opened in 1962.
He was president of the Jewish students’ society until 1962, and led discussions on threats to Israel’s survival when elected chairman of the Glasgow branch of the World Jewish Congress in 1960. He chaired Glasgow Ajex in 1951 and again in 1964, and represented Scotland on the Jewish Committee for Her Majesty’s Forces.
In the early 1960s he was chairman of Glasgow Kosher School Meals Service and from 1969-72 an inspiring president of the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council, particularly concerned with the welfare of the old. He represented Scottish Jewry on the Board of Deputies.
As his medical career progressed, he became active in medical bodies, culminating in the post of treasurer of the British Medical Association from 1973-81. During his nine years guiding BMA finances, its budget grew from under £3 million to over £10 million. His dedication and skill were recocognised with the appointment of OBE in 1982.
Prior to being BMA treasurer, he was for five years treasurer of the General Medical Services Defence Trust. He was also a long-serving member of the Scottish Council of the BMA and a member of its Central Council in London.
He was chairman or vice-chairman of a large number of medical bodies in Glasgow and London. In 1979 and again in 1981 he chaired the organising committee of international medical conferences held in Hong Kong and San Diego, enhancing Britain’s prestige.
He was a fellow of the British Medical Association and the Royal Society of Medicine, and a founder member and fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
During his many trips to London, he employed an assistant to look after the immediate needs of his patients in Glasgow. To compensate for his weekday absences, he held weekend surgeries, a patient service probably unique in Scotland.
Telephone callers were never diverted while he was in the city. Even at midnight or the small hours, callers received sympathy and immediate help.
In 1979 he co-chaired, with Dr Sidney Naftalin, the organising committee for the centenary of Glasgow’s Garnethill Synagogue, Scotland’s first purpose-built synagogue.
Celebrations featured a Jewish art exhibition and cultural exhibition, visits from a host of leading Scottish personalities and tributes from the Queen and Prime Minister, as well as a Jewish art and Jewish way of life exhibition, which attracted nearly 40,000 visitors.
The previous year he helped organise the largest British “write-in” on behalf of Soviet Jewry, when over 1,000 people gathered in a Glasgow hall to write letters of support to Jews suffering harassment in the Soviet Union.
In 1981-82, at the start of Poland’s Solidarity movement, he played a leading role in collecting medical supplies for the Scotland Aid for Poland Fund, sponsored by Scotland’s Lord Provosts.
He was a JP, the BBC’s radio doctor in Scotland, giving weekly talks, and was a vice-president of The Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice for the terminally ill, Glasgow’s wedding gift to the royal couple.
Predeceased by his wife, Ida, in 1995, he is survived by his son, Howard.