Obituaries R-Z

Barbara Joan Winton

22/12/1928-30/12/2023

Barbara was born on 22nd December 1928 in Stoke on Trent. She had two older brothers and a large extended family, her mother being one of 11 children. Her father was a secretary of the YMCA which led to many moves and different homes for the family.

On finishing school Barbara decided on a nursing career and was accepted to train at Westminster Hospital in London but, being too young to start, she worked as an auxiliary nurse at a nursing home in Sussex for a year. She started her training in 1947, making friends who would remain friends for life. Barbara recalled this time when rules were strict - only flowers and drinking water on the top of lockers, cutlery having to be laid out and counted, and cubicle rails being inspected for dust. Food was still subject to rationing, and you collected your rations on the way to the dining hall. After completing training in 1953 she returned to Portsmouth to work in a Royal Navy Maternity Home.

Barbara returned to Scotland to work at The Vert Maternity Hospital in Haddington before deciding to train as a Queen’s District Nurse in Edinburgh. She told stories of delivering a baby in an old Edinburgh tenement flat that had little furniture and newspapers on the floor, of a baby being placed to sleep in a drawer and of a little boy who innocently put toy cars in beside her sterile swabs. She subsequently worked a further two years as a Queen’s district nurse and midwife in Newton Mearns. Little did she know that on her first call in her first district she would meet the man that she would marry two and a half years later, George Winton, the nephew of a patient she visited. Barbara and George married at Liberton Kirk, Edinburgh in August 1960 but, tragically, in 1965, when their children were 3 years old and 4 months old respectively, George died suddenly. After such a short time together, Barbara found herself widowed with two young children to bring up alone.

Over the decades she was a devoted mother, grandmother and, latterly, great grandmother, as well as friend to many. She cared for others all her life, being fit and active for over 90 years.