Lorraine Ribbons dedicated years of her life to supporting children with heart conditions, drawing on her own experience as a mother of two sons born with heart disorders to become a volunteer whose work transformed the lives of young patients and their families.
Volunteer work that changed lives
From the late 1970s, after two of her three children were diagnosed with heart conditions, Ribbons began volunteering with the Association of Children with Heart Disorders (ACHD). The charity, formed in England in 1973 and registered in 1975, is run by families for families facing similar challenges. Scottish branches were established in 1981, and the Scottish Association for Children with Heart Disorders (SACHD) was created as a separate charity in 2004. ACHD is part of the wider Children’s Heart Federation, the leading UK children’s heart charity, which provides information, advice, grants for equipment and organises family support activities.
A trained nurse, Ribbons gained access to the cardiac wards of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh — known as “Sick Kids” — and was encouraged by consultants there to roam the wards providing emotional and practical help. Scotland’s first dedicated children’s hospital, the Sick Kids opened in 1860 and moved to its Sciennes Road site in 1895, joining the NHS in 1948. It provided paediatric and emergency care for children up to 13, with some specialties extending to 16. Construction on a new Royal Hospital for Children and Young People at Little France began in 2015, replacing the Sciennes Road building in 2021. The old hospital was noted for its artistic heritage, including murals painted by Phoebe Anna Traquair in the mortuary chapel in the 1880s, later transferred to the new facility.
Ribbons remained a volunteer at the hospital until 2008. She also took it upon herself to arrange holidays and weekend breaks for the children, setting up accommodation in the countryside where they could take part in activities such as pony riding and archery. The holidays were often transformative, giving the youngsters a chance to be apart from their parents and to get up to the kind of high-spirited fun that all teenagers enjoy — without someone constantly saying “you can’t do that”. Lorraine herself was a “can do” sort of person.
Personal life and family
Born in Oxford, Lorraine was the daughter of Humphrey Turner, a fighter pilot during the Second World War, and his wife Stephanie (née Keller), a Swiss woman he met after being shot down and finding his way to safety in her homeland. Records indicate a Sergeant Humphrey James Turner of the RAF was taken as a prisoner of war in 1943 after his crew bailed out. She was brought up in Poole, Dorset, and attended Talbot Heath school, an independent girls’ school whose notable alumnae include actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft, cellist Natalie Clein, television chef Fanny Cradock, broadcaster Dilys Powell and politician Shirley Williams.
After school she trained as a nurse in Oxford. While nursing she met Robert Simpson, whom she married in 1976. They moved to Edinburgh and, with the arrival of their first child, she became a full-time mother. When it turned out that two of their three sons — Russell, Adrian and Andrew — had heart disorders, she soon became a volunteer with the ACHD. Using her nursing background, she created her own role at the Edinburgh Sick Children’s hospital as she went along.
Later, Ribbons also trained as a marriage guidance counsellor, working for many years as a volunteer for Couple Counselling Lothian in Edinburgh and later becoming a supervisor. The organisation, founded in 1946, was the first of its kind in Scotland, stemming from the UK-wide Marriage Guidance movement of the 1930s, though its establishment was delayed by the Second World War. It offers relationship counselling, sexual and relationship therapy, family therapy, child and young person’s counselling, telephone counselling and individual counselling, and states it is inclusive of all regardless of age, race, belief, sexual orientation or social background, including transgender individuals.
After she and Robert Simpson divorced in 2006, Lorraine met her second husband on a sponsored bike ride and married in 2010. She is survived by him, her three sons and eight grandchildren.
An adventurous spirit
A keen cyclist, Ribbons maintained an adventurous streak. In 2011 she joined her son Andrew on a leg of his motor trip from Carrickfergus to Cape Town, travelling from Hurghada in Egypt down to Nairobi during the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring, which began in late 2010 and early 2011, had a profound impact on tourism in Egypt, leading to a sharp decline in visitor numbers and affecting the country’s economy and historical sites. Travel during that period was marked by instability and required considerable caution.
The London to Brighton Bike Ride — a major fundraising event established in 1976 that attracts around 30,000 cyclists annually — is among the notable cycling events in the UK, alongside the Milk Race, which was a prominent fixture from 1958 to 1993.