| Administrative History | Edith Patricia Stanley was born in 1919, the younger daughter of Rev Robert (Bertie) Stanley, an Anglicam clergyman and his wife, Gwladys Stanley (nee Gleave). She trained as a nurse at University College, Hospital, London during the Second World War, becoming a State Registered Nurse in 1944 and then in 1945 moved to Dumfries in Scotland for her midwifery training. In 1946, she took up a post as a nursing sister at the Anglo American Hospital in Cairo, returning to the UK in 1949. In 1950, she went to work at a Church Missionary Society hospital in the Gaza strip, supported by the Society of Friends where she was employed as the theatre sister working with Palestinian refugees and where she helped to provide medical treatment to a large refugee camp. On her return to the UK in 1951 she moved into community health work, training at Leeds University as a Health Visitor, qualifying in 1953. She subsequently worked in York and Lancaster, and then becoming Area Superintendent based at the county's headquarters in Preston from which she retired in the mid 1970s
In the later part of her working life and in retirement Pat also served as a magistrate, was President of the Lancaster branch of the Soroptomists and served on the governing body of her old school at Casterton (now in Cumbria). She regularly gave talks and lectures about her work including her relief work in the Gaza strip.
Source: memoirs of Pat Stanley |