Cicely Saunders

While serving at St. Thomas’s Hospital’s Northcote Trust, she met David Tasma, a cancer patient from Poland. She fell in love with Tasma whom she nursed till his death.

Tasma left 500 pounds which acted as an inspiration behind the construction of her dream project St. Christopher’s Hospice. Later, she developed romantic relationship with Antoni Michniewicz, her patient. Antoni passed away in 1960.

In 1980, she married Professor Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a Polish painter. In 1995, Marian passed away in St. Christopher’s hospice.

Cicely Saunders was the eldest child of Gordon Saunders, who worked in real estate, and his wife Chrissie. She belonged to a wealthy family of London. She attended day school from where she received her early education.

At the age of ten, she took admission at Southlands, a boarding school near Brighton. From 1932 to 1937, she attended Roedean, a fashionable boarding school near Brighton.

She planned to study at Oxford University after completing her education from Roedean. Unfortunately, she could not clear the entrance test. Later, she attended St. Anne’s College, Oxford.

After taking admission at St Anne’s in 1938, she decided to study politics, philosophy and economics. Later, she decided to join the Nightingale Training School to train as a Red Cross Nurse. Therefore, she left St. Anne’s in 1940.

She served her probationary rotations at several mental hospitals in London. After that, she served for the medical, surgical, children’s and gynaecological wards at Park Prewett hospital.

She started her career as a medical social worker in September 1947, by serving as an assistant almoner at St. Thomas’s Hospital’s Northcote Trust, a specialized health centre for cancer patients.

In the late 1940s, she worked part-time at St. Luke’s Home for the Dying Poor in Bayswater.

In 1951, she joined St Thomas's Hospital Medical School to become a physician. She graduated with MBBS degree in 1957. After that, she joined the pharmacology department at St. Mary’s Paddington as a research fellow.

At St. Mary’s Paddington, she also used to take care of patients. It was during this time that she took the initiative to promote the practice of the regular administration of drugs to relieve patients’ pain.

In 1958, she worked at the Roman Catholic St. Joseph’s hospice in Hackney, East London. There she served for seven years and pursued research work on pain control.

Cicely and her St. Christopher’s received the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize for modern approach towards hospice movement. This award acknowledges the importance of science and humanity to treat patients.