Lady Patricia Swinfen MBE

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Lady Patricia Swinfen MBE, on Thursday 9 February. Together with her late husband Roger, she co-founded and ran the Swinfen Charitable Trust. Patricia Anne Blackmore was born in Dublin on 14th June 1936, into an Anglo-Irish family; her mother’s family came from Northern Ireland and her father was from Somerset.

After school Pat decided to apply for the entrance to Nursing Studies at both the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin and the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. Her father wanted her to go to Trinity College, Dublin and study to become a doctor. He was ‘furious’ that she chose instead to become a nurse – Mummie said he drove her to the Adelaide in May 1956 and said, “Don’t come back unless you have made a success of this!”

Pat was trained at the Adelaide in Dublin under the watchful care of Miss Dornan, who she recalled “heading up the back stairs to one of the wards, with the valenciennes lace on the frill of her cap shaking with rage about some incident she had come across on the floor below us. Then one knew we were in for a pasting too, should she find anything slightly out of place.  But the other snapshot in my brain is of Miss Dornan walking into one of the semi-private wards, to find a patient's bed with curtains drawn around it - absolutely forbidden before Matron's rounds. She walked to the bed, pulled back the curtain and was handed a full bed pan by the male patient. Probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Poor Sister walking behind Matron, received the full blast of her wrath!”

Four years of intensive training, at a teaching hospital of “huge warmth and friendliness”. It was there that Pat, having been to school surrounded by Jewish refugee children, many of whom were her friends, had to nurse victims of the Russian Revolution, and survivors of Ravensbruck, Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps; particularly a mother and daughter, who “screamed the place down night after night”. Her time at the Adelaide had a lasting and deep effect on Pat. She said she was taught absolutely beautifully, including learning to do minor operations, and to run a hospital administratively. This, we now know has stood her in very good stead as she went on to establish The Swinfen Charitable Trust.

After finishing her training in Dublin, Pat was appointed onto the Staff - a great ‘honour’ but she had her heart set on joining the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps and so went for further training at the QARANC officers Commissioning course at Haslemere, Surrey after which she was posted to Millbank, London in 1961. From there she went to BMH M’tarfa in Malta on the 14th June until 10th August 1961 when she was sent to serve in BMH Benghazi, “to replace a Sister who had been casevaced home with kidney problems”. Arriving in Benghazi, Pat was met by Matron Ryan and taken to lunch at the Beach Club where she was introduced on the beach to a number of subalterns, amongst whom was Roger.

In December 1961 she returned to Libya to Tripoli to be in charge of the Soldiers wards, looking after serving personnel, the officer’s wives and the diplomats and families. It was during this time that one day Roger, rushed a friend of his from the regiment, Charles Ritchie (later Brigadier) who having consumed some unwashed grapes was suffering from a severe case of cyanide poisoning and narrowly avoided death. Pat served in Libya until October 1962, from where she returned to the UK to be married, the engagement between Pat and Roger having been announced in The Times in February 1962. On marrying, Patricia had to resign her commission, she devoted herself to her children and continued to work as a Nurse as well as volunteering for SSAFA for very many years. (The Soldier, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association).

Pat’s training as a QA and at the Adelaide established a standard of Nursing that never left her and was to act as the guiding principle throughout her later work with the charity. In 1982 Roger began working with John Grooms Association for the Disabled and he took special interest within parliament regarding legislation to improve disability rights or increase capability, by ensuring new houses etc., were built with disabled people in mind. Ten years later Roger was invited by the British High Commissioner in Bangladesh, to look at the problems which faced the disabled poor in the country. Roger found a registered UK nurse with spinal cord injury training to work at the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) founded and run by Valerie Taylor OBE. In 1995 Roger and Pat met Professor Richard Wootton, a world authority in Telemedicine and Telehealth, who visited CRP with Pat and Roger in August 1998, and they decided that it would be an ideal site for a pilot study into telemedical links between remote hospitals in the developing world and a group of consultants working in more up-to-date hospitals. In 1998 Roger gave the opening address at the 6th World Conference on Telemedicine at the Royal College of Medicine – there they met Lt. Colonel David Vassallo RAMC, who explained his own telemedicine system which he had devised and set up for the British Defence Medical Services. By July 1999 the telemedicine link between CRP and the UK had been set up by Pat and Roger and David Vassallo brought in various military specialists from The Royal hospital, Haslar, all generously giving their advice and assistance free of charge.

In those early days, telemedical links were established in the remote hospitals with new Olympus digital cameras, a laptop computer and a satellite telephone or landline used to send those first emails and cases. Katherine and Pat went out to CRP in Bangladesh in 1999 to help set up the link and train the system operators. In August 1999 Professor Jim Ryan working with the British military, approached Pat and Roger for help with a telemedical link in Pristina, Kosovo – and he referred patients, all casualties of the war to the newly created Swinfen Charitable Trust. Professor Ryan also appointed Roger and Pat to serve on the Catastrophies and Conflicts Forum of the Royal Society of Medicine. Those very early days saw links established in Bangladesh, Kosovo, Nepal and the Solomon Islands.

The partnership between Roger and Pat was one of equals and they adored each other, no question about it. They pulled together as a team and when one struggled the other pulled stronger. Both Pat and Roger worked tirelessly to help people in need and have left a lasting legacy with the continuation of the Trust. Pat will be missed greatly by her children, grandchildren and the extended family.

A Funeral Service will be held on a date to be announced.  If you wish to make a donation in Pat’s memory, please use the Donate link https://www.swinfentelemed.org/ Donate