Partner Beatrice Gordon Holmes, Helen Boyle
Queer Places:
56 Shirley Dr, Hove BN3 6UF, UK
Dr. Cicely Lamorna Hingston (August 26, 1894 - January 11, 1989) was a consultant psychiatrist to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and several other hospitals in Sussex. She was one of the partners of Helen Boyle. She lived during her student days with the first woman stockbroker, Beatrice Gordon Holmes who went by the name of Gordon Holmes and had no problem identifying herself as a ‘real lesbian’.
Cicely Lamorna Hingston was born on 26 August 1894 in Liskeard, the daughter of Richard Hingston and Sarah Elizabeth Smith. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College. During the first world war she went to France with the British Red Cross; she remained there for four and a half years and was awarded the MBE for her work. On demobilisation she became resident secretary to Dr Helen Boyle, a pioneer in the treatment of early nervous and mental disorders. After five years she decided to study medicine, and she qualified at St Mary's Hospital, London, in 1930. Subsequently she practised as a general practitioner, gradually specialising in psychiatry.
She was appointed visiting consultant to Lady Chichester Hospital, Hove, in 1937; honorary consultant to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, and New Sussex Hospital; and consultant psychiatrist to Southlands Hospital, Shoreham. In 1935 she had started a child guidance clinic at Lady Chichester Hospital, the first such clinic in Sussex, and in 1942 she was appointed psychiatrist to child guidance clinics at Hove and Lewes. When the NHS was introduced she became a consultant in the hospitals in which she had worked on a voluntary basis, and she continued private consulting after her obligatory retirement from the NHS in 1959.
Dr Hingston started the Brighton and Hove branch of the League of the Hard of Hearing in 1949, being president for many years. She was a member of several committees and organisations, including the Medical Women's Federation (she served on the headquarters executive committee during the second world war) and the Brighton and Mid-Sussex Division of the BMA, of which she was chairman in 1954.
"She was a devoted daughter, sister, aunt, great aunt, and great great aunt and took deep delight in her family. This did not prevent her from making humorous or astringent comments; she would puncture pomposity at once, though never unkindly. She was always interested in other people, and all generations talked to her naturally and profited from their contact with so understanding a person. Advice was never volunteered without being asked for, but practical help often was, in many ways. A devout Christian all her life, she exemplified the ideal of service to others without ever a hint of priggishness."
She died on 11 January 1989 aged 94.
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