Family honours Baby Beat founder with donation to charity

Ian Wilson Manson's family donates funds raised at his memorial service to Baby Beat, the charity he helped establish.

Funds raised at a memorial service celebrating the life of Sharoe Green Maternity Unit consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Mr Ian Wilson Manson have been gifted to Baby Beat, the charity he co-founded after launching the 1987 Baby Beat Appeal to fund equipment to better monitor the unit’s mums-to-be and their unborn babies.

Sue Carr and Thomas Manson presented £4,333.44 to Baby Beat in memory of their father, Mr Ian Wilson Manson, the charity’s co-founder and first chairman | Contributed

placeholder image — Sue Carr and Thomas Manson presented £4,333.44 to Baby Beat in memory of their father, Mr Ian Wilson Manson, the charity’s co-founder and first chairman | Contributed

Two of Mr Manson’s four children, son Thomas Manson and daughter Sue Carr, presented current Baby Beat fundraising manager Joanna Allitt with £4,333.44, which also included a £1,000 family donation from March last year (2025) when Mr Manson celebrated his 94th birthday.

Mr Manson, who passed away at Abbeyfield House in Clitheroe last November, was Baby Beat’s first chairman. He had insisted the Baby Beat Appeal, launched with unit senior midwife Anne Boyce, had a constitution and formal meetings to protect funds raised.

While the appeal led to the Sharoe Green Maternity Unit becoming the first in the UK to have a fully operational electronic foetal monitoring system linked to a computer, Mr Manson’s early ground rules also ensured Baby Beat’s smooth progression to charity status and by 2010, Baby Beat had raised its first £1 million.

Mr Ian Wilson Manson during his medical career. He became a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Sharoe Green Maternity Unit in 1969 and remained there until retiring in 1995 | Contributed

Mr Manson, who invited football legend Sir Tom Finney to become the Baby Beat patron, was also an active fundraiser for the charity. He regularly took up bucket collections in Preston city centre and worked to secure corporate donations, among which was a breakthrough £50,000 donation from the Spar chain of convenience stores.

Thomas said: “We are immensely proud of dad’s drive to enhance maternal wellbeing and the health of unborn babies. He was a true pioneer in a number of ways but as a man, he was modest to the point of self-effacement, uncomfortable with fuss and perplexed that his life might be of the slightest interest to anyone.”

Mr Manson, whose service of thanksgiving took place in February at Whalley’s Church of Saint Mary and All Saints, was born in Calcutta, the eldest of three children to educational missionaries the Rev James Herbert Manson and Christina Mary Wilson.

Ian as a young boy. He was born in Calcutta, the eldest of three children of educational missionaries the Rev James Herbert Manson and Christina Mary Wilson | Contributed

The family returned to England when Mr Manson was aged three, settling in Manchester. Mr Manson attended his father’s old school, Manchester Grammar School, and from there went to Manchester University to study medicine. On graduating, he worked at Manchester Royal Infirmary followed by Rossendale General Hospital before taking up a three-year Short Service Commission in the RAF.

Ian as a schoolboy. After returning to England from India as a young child, he went on to attend Manchester Grammar School | Contributed

This led to a posting at RAF Hospital Aden in the former British colony located at the base of the Arabian Peninsula. It was here he gained his Diploma in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and where he was the sole doctor in charge of the maternity unit for the wives of all branches of the armed forces stationed in the former colony.

Returning to the UK in 1961, Mr Manson worked at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary then at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital and Liverpool Maternity Hospital. In 1969, he started his consultancy at Sharoe Green where he remained until retiring in 1995.

During his time in Preston, Mr Manson, who lived in Hurst Green and then Whalley with second wife Mary, introduced laparoscopic/keyhole surgery. It made him one of the very first surgeons nationally to follow in the footsteps of the late Sir Patrick Steptoe, the pioneer of IVF, who in 1967 had published the ground-breaking medical text book “Laparoscopy in Gynaecology”.

In 1971, using only Steptoe’s book and in the absence of any formal training, Mr Manson taught himself how to perform laparoscopic infertility investigations, developing his skills to go on and perform many innovative and much more complex procedures, among them laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy, which he undertook for the first time in 1992. Mr Manson became in demand to lecture on the topic.

Ian in retirement. His family said Baby Beat, the maternity charity he co-founded, was never far from his heart | Contributed

Thomas added: “After years of his career demanding much of his attention, upon his retirement, dad was able to spend time with his family and indulge his love of gardening, genealogy and music but Baby Beat was never far from his heart.”

Baby Beat works to support mums from throughout Central Lancashire, who have their babies at the Sharoe Green Maternity Unit, and their newborns. It also supports the unit’s NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).