Notices
Dr Emily Liddell (née Horsfall)
In College 1931-35 St Margaret's
Taken from an article in the Bermuda Sun (Wednesday, March 26, 2008)
Funeral today for activist and pioneer Emily Liddell
Among our first women doctors; first woman to hold a driver’s licence; once worked with lepers in Devonshire
 |
| Trailblazer: Dr. Emily Liddell |
She died on March 11 of kidney failure - a complication that arose after she had undergone heart bypass surgery.
Dr. Liddell was roughly a month shy of her 91st birthday. Her funeral will take place at the Anglican Cathedral, where she had attended the 8am Holy Communion service every day for years.
Dr. Liddell was best known as a transcendental meditation (TM) teacher, a movement with which she had been involved since the 1970s. But that was just one facet of her life.
She worked as a public health doctor in Bermuda in the 1940s, later took additional training to become a psychiatrist - a specialty that only a handful of Bermudians have pursued - worked and marched for women's rights in the U.K., worked to eliminate racial barriers in Bermuda and supported gay rights.
Her interest in women's issues led to her becoming a founder of Bermuda's Physical Abuse Centre. Glenn Fubler, who met Dr. Liddell when she became a member of Beyond Barriers, an organization which he founded, said it was through her many connections that filmmaker Errol Williams was able to obtain the funding he needed to complete his film about the 1959 Theatre Boycott, When Voices Rise...
Dr. Liddell could be described as a citizen of the world, although according to her son, Dr. Malcolm Liddell, she always thought of "her beloved Bermuda" as "her true home."
She was born in Australia, the daughter of Dr. William Horsfall, an Australian surgeon, and Lucy Webb Hastings. Her parents met in Bermuda where her father had been stationed with the Royal Navy. Her mother's father, General Hastings, was an American Civil War general, who had retired to Bermuda, founded the Easter lily trade and at one time owned a large part of Point Shares. He also was a founder of the Bermuda High School for Girls, which Dr. Liddell, who spent a large part of her childhood in Bermuda, attended.
She left Bermuda in 1931 to attend Cheltenham Ladies College in the U.K., and four years later, was accepted into medical school. She qualified as a physician in 1942. While a medical student, she worked as a casualty officer during the London Blitz.
She met her first husband Dr. Simon Frazer, who later became Bermuda's chief medical officer, in medical school and they had two sons, Hugh and Simon.
Dr. Liddell returned to Bermuda in 1945 and worked as assistant government medical officer, under Dr. Henry Wilkinson. Her responsibilities included screening patients for tuberculosis, family planning, and treating lepers at the leper colony in Devonshire. She also helped to recruit the first black community nurses to work at the Health Department during the era of segregation.
As a community physician, Dr. Liddell had the right to use a car, and she became the first woman in Bermuda to have a driver's licence.
Dr. Liddell returned to the U.K. with her two sons when her marriage to Dr. Frazer broke up and she took additional training to become a psychiatrist. In 1954, she married Dr. Donald Liddell, and had two more children, Malcolm and Laura.
'Never good at marriage'
She put her career on hold when her children were young, Dr. Malcolm Liddell said, but she went back to work in the mid-1960s. Her second marriage eventually ended as well. According to her son, she once said she was "never very good at marriage."
In 1967, she became a psychiatrist at a school for delinquent adolescent girls who were highly intelligent. The position was "tailor made for her skills as a psychiatrist and a physician," her son said. She held this post until her retirement in 1976.
She also worked with disadvantaged youth and played a pivotal role in setting up the Fulham and Putney branch of the feminist movement in the U.K.
She returned to Bermuda the year she retired, and lived at Point Shares. In Bermuda, she became the chief TM teacher, a role she gave up about five years ago.
Dr. Liddell said his mother "combined the practice of mediation with her profound, if a little unorthodox Christian faith." She also worked with people who had alcohol and drug problems and was generous with her time, money and house, where she often put up people in need.
She was an adventurous person despite her advancing years - she snorkelled with her grandchildren on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. When she was 89, she went on a two-month trip to Australia. In the last six months of her life, she was in considerable pain because of osteoporosis. Yet Dr. Liddell said she continued going to the gym and working with a personal trainer almost until the end.
Frances Eddy, who lived with Dr. Emily Liddell twice for a period of four years, said her most outstanding quality was the way she brought a wide diversity of people into her home and of how she helped people in crisis.
"I was always amazed at her capacity for embracing all kinds of people," she said.
Mr. Fubler recalled her connections to a wide range of people and of how she put up people Beyond Barriers brought to Bermuda at her home.
She is survived by her four children, Hugh Frazer and Simon Frazer, Dr. Malcolm Liddell and Laura Liddell, seven grandchildren, three 'honorary' grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and a brother Dr. Bill Horsfall.
Meredith Ebbin
Senior Writer