Elaine Murphy, Baroness Murphy

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Elaine Murphy, Baroness Murphy (born 16 January 1947) is a British psychiatrist, academic and crossbench member of the House of Lords.

She trained as a doctor and psychiatrist and spent about 25 years in the National Health Service. From 1984 to 1990 she served as a health service general manager for Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority. She later became the United Kingdom’s first professor of psychiatry of old age at Guy’s Hospital, London. After stepping back from full-time work, she took on various non-executive roles, including chair of the North East London Strategic Health Authority until 2006, visiting professor at Queen Mary University of London, vice-president of the Alzheimer’s Society, and chair of council at St George’s, University of London (2009–2012). She was also a non-executive member of Monitor, the NHS hospitals regulator.

On 17 June 2004 she was made a life peer, Baroness Murphy, of Aldgate in the City of London, and sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher, focusing on mental health and ageing issues.

Personal life: she was first married to John Murphy (1969–2000) and, since 2001, to Michael A Robb. She lives in Norfolk with homes in London and Lucca, where she grows olives.

In 2009 it emerged that she authored a hoax letter about “cello scrotum” published in The BMJ in 1974. She has a PhD in social history and has published work on 18th- and 19th-century workhouses, madhouses and local history. Her book The Moated Grange (2015) covers South Norfolk, and she is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society.