Joseph Stone, Baron Stone

Who was Joseph Stone, Baron Stone?

Joseph Ellis Stone, Baron Stone was an officer in the British Army, and a doctor, most notably to Harold Wilson. He was given the name of Joseph Ellis Silverstone. He was knighted, and then created a life peer in the 1976 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours with the title Baron Stone, of Hendon in Greater London, on 24 June 1976.

Joe Stone was a General Practitioner, originally from Llanelli in Wales, who after qualifying in Cardiff worked as a GP in and around Hendon. He took on a number of patients from Hampstead Garden Suburb, at the time an area popular with left wing politicians, one of whom, Harold Wilson went on to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

During World War II, as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Joe was in the British Army force that liberated Belsen Concentration Camp. He became heavily involved as a doctor in the initial army reaction to the situation they found in Belsen, and to the rehabilitation of the prisoners there. He was possibly the first British Jewish doctor to enter Belsen after its liberation. His brother-in-law, Sidney Bernstein was then commissioned by the British Government to make a documentary about the liberation of Belsen and the Concentration Camps, which may have been influenced by the letters Joe sent home to his wife, Beryl.