Stories of volunteers supporting the health service since 1949
Jennifer Loehnis - Central London
As a great grand-daughter of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, it could have felt inevitable that Jenny Loehnis would find herself as Chairman of the League of Friends.
I was pleased to do it. I’d come to a stage in my life. My children left home, my husband was working in London. I didn’t have a job. It fitted in very well.
As it was, she did inherit the role from her Aunt and was pleased to continue the family involvement in the hospital founded by her great-grandmother. Fundraising particularly sales to raise money for equipment not provided by the NHS were core to the contribution, as it was interaction with hospital staff and management.
Interviewer
So, first of all, could I ask you your name?
Jennifer Loehnis
Jennifer Loehnis
Interviewer
And could I ask you which friends group we are talking about today?
Jennifer Loehnis
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.
Interviewer
And how old are you?
Jennifer Loehnis
84.
Interviewer
Thank you. Well, it’s lovely to meet you today. So what first got you involved in the friends group at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson?
Jennifer Loehnis
My aunt had been Chairman of the friends for, for a long time. She was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s granddaughter. And I didn’t know before her time what had happened There was a very powerful… was she a gynecologist, I think she was? Named, Josephine Barnes, very much a sort of guiding force for the hospital. And I think she was somewhat involved in the friends. I’m not absolutely sure, but Diana Anderson, my unmarried aunt, she and her sister, Hermione, had run the friends for a long time. They spent a lot of time making gifts to sell. There was a big hospital sale every year, and they made. They were unmarried, they had no job, and they spent a lot of their time making these very nice things that were then sold.
Interviewer
And what sort of decade are we talking about that this was going on?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, I think I got involved. It’s awful. I, I never make notes of things. I really don’t remember that. Well, but I think 1980s, that, that sort of time. They rebuilt the hospital then, or there was, it was about to be closed, and Mrs. Thatcher stepped in, and it wasn’t closed. And so I think it was the late eighties probably.
Interviewer
Okay.
Jennifer Loehnis
And anyhow, my aunt wanted to retire, and she wanted me to take over.
Interviewer
And it doesn’t sound like there was a huge amount of choice in that?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, no, I was pleased to do it. I’d come to a stage in my life. My children left home, you know, it was actually, my husband was working in London. I didn’t have a job, as you know, it’s it fitted in very well, really.
Interviewer
And frankly, there was a whole generation of women that did that sort of thing, wasn’t there, That they ran Friends Groups?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes, there was! Jean Jared Lee, who had some…I think was actually the Chairman. My aunt may not have been, Jean Jared Lee. She, her husband was in some way involved with Royal family, I think. And she was the Chair person, or woman who I took over from. But though, I don’t remember much for handover or anything.
Interviewer
No, you were just expected to know how to do it.
Jennifer Loehnis
Not really. And then we employed somebody called Elizabeth Elliot had obviously been, she must have been there when I got there, I think. And eventually she went and I think I ran it rather single handedly, with a committee, and a great deal of help from a wonderful person called Dorothy Meyer, who was old at the time. But she had been someone’s secretary, or something. She was very efficient, and she was my secretary unpaid. I was unpaid. We were just honorary, we were absolute amateurs, really.
Interviewer
So we are in the, somewhere in the, mid to late 1980s. And you take over?
Jennifer Loehnis
In the nineties.
Interviewer
And what did the Friends, what did the Friends group do at that point?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, they raised money, not a vast amount, I thought in many ways. Our main thing was to be a sounding post between the staff, the you know, the less high ranking staff, and the powers that be, because they always seemed to be terrified of saying anything or, you know, airing their grievances and they would come and talk to us. So we were a bit of a go between really.
Interviewer
And it feels, I have to say, that hospitals of that era still had their own character, and felt a bit like a family. And so there was a sort of a role for the friends as part of the family of the…
Jennifer Loehnis
I think that’s right! Yes. I think that is right. Even though we were a pleasant presence there, we went in once a week. I spent most of the day there once a week, we had a sale… it became increasingly difficult even. And then of course the rooms, we were situated in a cupboard at one stage. I mean, we really find it very hard to have a proper room to work out of, and things like that.
Interviewer
So you did some fundraising, traditional fundraising?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes, yes we did. I mean, just by means of this sale and, and gifts. There was no R.I.P, which we always, nobody died then, nobody ever died in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. So that was a source of income we did not have.
Interviewer
Okay. So that, that’s quite interesting. So you had, and did you have volunteers? It sounds like you had a very supportive and active committee, but it doesn’t sound like there were a huge number of volunteers then either?
Jennifer Loehnis
No, I don’t remember. I remember one or two, but not many. No. You know, by that stage, a lot of people had jobs.
Interviewer
Yes. And the world was changing quite rapidly, wasn’t it?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes. It was only ever going to be women with us. Really. It was never going to be men. Yes. Because we were a women only hospital. I mean, there were male doctors.
Interviewer
And as obviously there was a merger that was going to happen with you UCLH. And how did that affect the friends group at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, we were, we were taken over in fact, but only that, that was fine. I mean, I, I remember working with Fiona very hard on a document. I mean, I think we did something that nobody else ever done properly merging three charities, if not four because St. Peters was part of it.
Interviewer
Yes.
Jennifer Loehnis
And we did it without a lawyer, and we just worked on it, and we wrote our own constitution, et cetera said, well, I think it all had to be ironed out afterwards, and St. Peters came out. What I always was adamant about was that we threw all our funds in, and we had more funds than some, threw all the funds into the same melting pot. We didn’t amalgamate with each charity having their own little thing, but then St. Peters, who were defunct by that time still had the charity, popped up and said, no, they couldn’t possibly do that because some man who’d been very badly injured at some stage, given everything and to, to St. Peters. And they, they couldn’t possibly let it die. And Fiona Aird or Gillian Vaughan Hudson very cleverly found a solution, which was to give a donation every year, with this man’s name from St. Peters, and that sorted that one. And we had free advice from Freshfields I think, but it cost us nothing, which was quite remarkable.
Interviewer
Absolutely. And again, I think that’s a very particular thing that when I talk to friends groups, they’re very good at making use of their networks to help them do things. Yes. Usually without much charge. Yes?
Jennifer Loehnis
No, that’s true. We always had a lot of trouble finding a Treasurer, and it became increasingly difficult because the Treasurer is liable for much more nowadays aren’t they. I mean, they’ve much more held to…
Interviewer
I think there is some real challenges, and years ago it was the sort of thing that the local bank manager might take on. Yes. And nowadays we don’t have local bank managers, so…
Jennifer Loehnis
And anyhow, they then become liable and they’re very frightened, I think.
Interviewer
Absolutely. So do you have any favorite memory of the friends group?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, I suppose the sales were, were a big thing and I, I do remember, you know, one of our members turning into a actually good saleswoman. She was absolutely terrific. She was an ex, her husband was High Commissioner in, Deli in India, so that he was a big wig in the Foreign Office, and she was a very intelligent woman in her own right. She turned into the most marvelous, saleswoman. She could sell anything to anybody. And I always enjoyed seeing her at work and you know, we enjoyed being part of the hospital.
Interviewer
Did those sales happen in the hospital?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes. Until it then became impossible, we couldn’t get a room, and things like that. You’ll know everything became difficult.
Interviewer
Well, I must admit, I was talking to the Chairman of Friends Group at St. Mary’s at Paddington. And she was saying that they now do it in the car park, because that’s the only space they’re allowed to do it in. Things have changed.
Jennifer Loehnis
They really have, and I mean, the trolley became impossible because you had to have refrigerated somewhere to keep the food, and we didn’t have that. Even, it all became very…always difficult really.
Interviewer
What had worked, didn’t work anymore?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes. I think that’s right. Like everything, it changes.
Interviewer
Yes, absolutely. So do you think the position you’re sit in now, there’s still a role for people to get involved in hospitals, perhaps through friends group, perhaps through volunteering?
Jennifer Loehnis
Yes, I would’ve thought so. I mean, my husband was Treasurer for, at the JR (John Ratcliffe). When we came to live in Oxford eight years ago, he became Treasurer of the JR Friends. I think so. I mean, they’re not the main fund giving body in any way, probably to the hospital, but I think it’s nice to make people feel part of the hospital. They probably enjoy their stay more, you know, if they feel part of it.
Interviewer
So I’m interviewing you, but you’ve mentioned your husband. So was your husband, sort of, got caught up in Friends as well?
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, I can tell you, he was handed in church a thing saying that the Middlesex, I mean the JR, John Ratcliffe Hospital needed volunteer help. And he came home from church, handed it to me and I said, “No, I’ve done my bit, you can do yours now.”
Interviewer
So that’s how he started.
Jennifer Loehnis
So he started, and then he was made to make sandwiches, or something, in the canteen. He was very much ‘not good’ at that. He hasn’t a clue on making sandwiches. He became Treasurer for a shortish time. No, but he become Treasurer, much more his line of country than making sandwiches.
Interviewer
And again, what I find interesting is people find that they have a soft spot for the Friends, and they said, as they move around the country, you discover they’ve joined a different friends group somewhere else. And I find that sort of, even though they’re all different, they share some common values.
Jennifer Loehnis
Well, it is a community, and people like to be part of a community don’t they?
Interviewer
Absolutely. So when you knew you were going to be speaking to me today, is there anything that you desperately wanted to tell me that you haven’t had the chance to say it
Jennifer Loehnis
I didn’t. I didn’t really know what it was all about. No, I, I mean, I’m not a, I’m actually a ‘Looker forward’ and not a ‘Looker backwards’. Okay. I’ve spent very little time dwelling on the past.
Interviewer
Okay. That’s excellent. Well, thank you.
| Contributor: | Jennifer Loehnis |
| Recorded on: | 13 November 2022 |
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| Setting: | Hospital |
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The Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital and its predecessor organisations provided health care to women in central London from the mid-Victorian era. It was named after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, one of Britain's first female physicians, and its work continues in the modern Elizabeth Garrett Anderson wing of University College Hospital, part of UCLH NHS Foundation Trust.