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Anne Gilmore
Born into a working class family in 1934, Anne Gilmore has spent most of her life in Glasgow. She describes herself as an ‘all-rounder’, at first graduating in Music, and only taking medicine as a second degree after she had married, despite financial hardship and the arrival of two children during her final years. Her early interests were in psychiatry and geriatrics, and she worked for Ferguson Anderson on a three year study of elderly people living in their own homes, for which she received her MD in 1976. Thus Anne Gilmore found herself on the international lecture circuit in the fields of gerontology, sociology, and thanatology. Her route into palliative care is unusual in this respect, being influenced more by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross than Cicely Saunders, and emanating from an academic rather than a clinical setting. However, after Ferguson Anderson retired in 1979, Anne Gilmore, too, moved into the clinical arena. Anne was the first Medical Director appointed by Marie Curie, at their Hunter’s Hill ‘Home’ in Glasgow in 1979-80. She subsequently moved into general practice. However, her knowledge and skills were welcomed by a group of clergy seeking to establish a hospice in the Glasgow area in the early 1980s, and when Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice opened in Glasgow in 1986, Anne was its first Medical Director. The interview charts the development of the hospice through from its funding and building to in-patient beds, day care, education, research, and its first International Conference in the late 1980s. Latterly Anne Gilmore developed an interest in psychoanalysis and group therapy, studying at the Skiros Institute in Greece. Anne Gilmore died from cancer on 25th March 1998.
Interview conducted by David Clark, 10 December 1996
Interview Duration: 1 hour, 15 minutes