Winifred Rushforth

During a long and active career, spent mostly in Edinburgh, Scotland, she came to be revered and regarded as a local personality for people interested in spirituality and self-actualization.

There she later met her husband, stockbroker Frank Victor Rushforth (1888–1945), and she spent the best part of the next 20 years as a surgeon and hospital administrator, specialising in women's health.

[citation needed] She became interested in psychology and, on returning from India, spent some time working at the Tavistock Clinic in London, alongside fellow Scot, Hugh Crichton-Miller.

She became a candidate for training at the Clinic but before completing her studies, her husband took up a position at Edinburgh College of Art, and they moved back to Scotland.

[citation needed] Her daughter, Dr Diana Bates, continued Rushforth's work and was Director of Wellspring in Edinburgh for some years.

She was fascinated, in particular, by his work on the Bushmen of the Kalahari and kept a carved wooden statuette of a bushman, by the contemporary sculptor Christopher Hall, in the drawing room of her home in Edinburgh.

[citation needed] Sir Laurens van der Post attended Dr Rushforth's Memorial Service in Old St Paul's Church, Edinburgh, as Prince Charles's representative.