Dr. Ethilda Budgett-Meakin Herford

The death of Dr. Herford at the age of 84 marks the loss of one of the few remaining Members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society who took part in the activities of the small group responsible for establishing a society to study psycho-analysis in England.

Born in 1872, she was the daughter of Edward E. Meakin, for some years editor of the Times of Morocco, and of Sarah Anne Budgett, of an old Bristol family.

Dr. Herford was educated at the North London Collegiate School, and University College, London. As a preparation for medicine she worked for two years with a mission in the slums of Glasgow. She took a medical degree (M.B., B.S.) at the Royal Free Hospital in 1898 and 1899. After holding hospital appointments in England she went to India to do mission work, and was later Superintendent of the Victoria Hospital for Women in Calcutta. At this period of her life her main interest was in gynaecology, and she published papers on ectopic gestation and ovarian cysts.

Her marriage to Oscar Herford, a gifted violinist, took place in 1907 in Calcutta. They had three sons and a daughter, two of whom are also doctors. The family returned to live in England in 1917 and settled in Reading.

Dr. Herford's interest in psycho-analysis was aroused by the early publications of Freud, and extended through contacts with members of the staff of the Brunswick Square Clinic, founded by the late Dr. Jessie Murray and carried on subsequently by Dr. James Glover, Ella Sharpe and others. She was present at the International Psycho-Analytical Congress held at The Hague in 1920. There she met Karl Abraham and went to Berlin to work with him for a few months, and subsequently worked with Ferenczi at Budapest. On her return to Reading she gave her time to the study and treatment of functional nervous disorders by psycho-therapy and psycho-analysis in particular. She became a director of the British Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders in Camden Town. In 1928 she published a pap