The Times, 30 December 1974

OBITUARY
MR ALECK BOURNE
An eminent gynaecologist

Mr Aleck Bourne, MA, MB, FRCS, FRCOG, the eminent gynaecologist, who died on Friday at the age of 88, was before he retired consulting gynaecologist at St Mary's Hospital and to the Samaritan Hospital for Women and consulting obstetric surgeon to . Queen Charlotte’s Hospital.
Aleck  William Bourne was born on June 4, 1886, the only son of the Rev W. C. Bourne, of Barnet.  He was educated at Rydal School and at Downing College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first class Natural Science Tripos in 1908.
Entering St Mary's Hospital with a senior university scholarship he qualified as MRCS, LRCP (1910), and from this time until the outbreak of the 1914-18 War held residential and other appointments at St Mary's, Queen Charlotte's and the Samaritan.  In 1911 he obtained the MB, BCh, Cambridge, and the FRCS England.
He served as a surgical specialist in Egypt and France during 1914-17, being attached successively to the 17th and 2nd General Hospitals, and after the war he rapidly acquired a large consulting practice in obstetrics and gynaecology.
During his time at Queen Charlotte's, in association with Professor J. H. Burn, he published important original work on uterine action in labour and in response to various drugs.  He examined in his specially for the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham and for the conjoint diplomas of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons.
In 1929 he was elected a foundation Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and was curator of its museum, which he founded in 1938 and built up during the following years.  He was president of the  Obstetrical and Gynaecological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1938-39.
Bourne was the author of many valuable contributions to the literature of his. specialty, his best known writings being A Synopsis of Midwifery and Gynaecology and Recent Advances in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, jointly with Mr Leslie Williams, and, jointly with Sir Eardley Holland, was editor of British Obstetric and Gynaecological Practice.
In 1938 Bourne came into the public eye when he operated to terminate the pregnancy of a girl aged 14 years and nine months, who had been criminally assaulted and raped by some soldiers in a London barracks.  The operation was done in St. Mary's Hospital and Bourne himself drew the attention of the police to his intervention.
He was tried at the Central Criminal Court in July, 1938, on a charge of procuring abortion and was acquitted.  His action was described by the Lancet as "an example of disinterested conduct in consonance with the highest traditions of the profession".
Since the Act of 1861 the only recognized justification for the operation was probable danger to the life of the pregnant woman should the pregnancy be allowed to continue.
But in his summing-up of Rex v. Bourne (1939, 1 KB, 687) Macnaghten, J. said: "If the doctor is of opinion, on reasonable grounds and with adequate knowledge, that the probable consequences of the pregnancy will be to make the woman a physical or mental wreck, the jury are quite entitled to take the view that the doctor, who, under these circumstances and in that honest belief, operates, is operating for the purpose of preserving the life of the mother."
Bourne was a wholehearted advocate of state medicine and expounded his views in a Penguin special, Health of the Future (1942), which attracted much attention.  He was a man of wide interests which included literature and his garden.  His chief sport was racing and deep sea cruising in small yaclits.
He was a member of several yacht clubs and in 1933 won the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club's cup for the best cruiser of the year without a paid hand.  He married in 1912 Bessic, eldest daughter of Mr G. W. Hayward, of Barnet.  There were three daughters of the marriage.