Esther Rickards

Esther Rickards (born July 13, 1893 in London , † February 9, 1977 in Windsor) was a British doctor and civil rights activist.

Life and activity

Rickards was one of seven children of veterinarian John Edward Rickards and his wife Annie, b. Somers. The mother was Jewish, the father converted to Judaism in order to be able to marry her, but was originally a Christian.

After attending school, Rickards studied medicine - a rarity for a woman at the time - at Regent Street Polytechnic, Birbeck College, the University of London and St. Mary's Hospital. In 1924 she received an FRCS. She specialized in gynecology and worked successively at various London hospitals, such as Assistant Medical Officer in Paddington.

Rickards was politically active at an early age, particularly campaigning for the rights of women and minorities: Even before the First World War, she was active in the suffragette movement. Because of her socialist views, she joined the Labor Party after the war, in which she particularly advocated the socialization of health care, i.e. H. the establishment of a general right to health care and financing of the same by the community began.

Rickards had been on the Labor Party's Public Health Advisory Committee since the 1920s. She stood out in public through her advocacy for the right to birth control and the right of women to gain access to resources to prevent or terminate unwanted pregnancies. In 1930 she participated in the founding of the Socialist Medical Association, which was to have a significant influence on the positions of the Labor Party on health policy and ultimately led to the establishment of the National Health Service. After the founding of the same, she served from 1947 to 1971 on the board, the supervisory body, the NHS for the North West Metropolitan Region and the Board of Governors of St. Mary's Hospital.

In 1928 she became a member of the London County Council (LCC). In 1930 she helped found the Socialist Medical Association, and chaired its founding meeting.

The National Socialist police officers classified Rickards as an ideological enemy: in the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put her on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles - where he was mistakenly suspected - through The Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the SS special commandos following the occupation troops with special priority.

Since 1971, Rickards has been a volunteer consultant surgeon at St. Mary's Hospital.

Rickards spent her retirement in Windsor. In her final years she has dedicated herself to breeding dogs ( cocker spaniels and clumer spaniels ) and has appeared as a judge at dog shows. She died in Edward VII Hospital in Windsor.

literature

• William D. Rubinstein / Michael Jolles / Hilary L. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History , p. 800f.
• John Stewart: "Rickards, Esther (1893-1977)", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed