Kathleen Raven

Dame Kathleen Annie Ingram Raven, DBE, FRCN (9 November 1910, Coniston, Lancashire, England – 19 April 1999, Oxford, England) was a British nurse, matron, government health official, health care engineer, and educational philanthropist.

Background Kathleen Annie Raven was born and raised in Coniston, Cumbria, attending Ulverston Grammar School. Art was a strong influence on her as a child; her father's mother was personal assistant the painter John Ruskin whilst her mother's father claimed the potter Miles Mason as an ancestor. She was brought up in a Plymouth Brethren household where her parents read a chapter of the Bible every night. She had three brothers with whom she climbed mountains, skated, fished and rowed. She had won a scholarship for midwifery which she also qualified in, working in the local area of East London where she encountered significant poverty.

Raven died at the age of 88 in 1999.

Personal life In 1959 she married Professor John Thornton Ingram who had created the Dermatological Department at Leeds before accepting the first chair in dermatology at Newcastle. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1970; Freeman of the City of London in 1986 and honorary degrees from Keele University and the University of Leeds. She was made a Patron of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and was an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Barbers.