Marjorie Lewis-Manning - a woman with a mission

On top was a wooden mock-up of a cancer scanner and she was on a mission – to publicise the success of her cause. Marjorie Lewis-Manning was a remarkable woman. She dreamed the impossible dream of raising money to provide a state-of-the-art body scanner for Poole Hospital and got the community behind her to turn it into a reality.

I first met her in 1980, soon after she launched the Poole Hospital Scanner Appeal to raise what was then the huge sum of £250,000.

Others said it was unachievable but that didn’t deter the 77-year-old widow.

Those days, in the early ’80s, when the phone rang in the Echo’s Poole office and Mrs Lewis-Manning said she wanted a word, you didn’t hesitate. It was a command.

She would summon you to her beautiful home in Lilliput and tell you what she wanted to go in the paper. Sometimes it was a coffee morning being held to raise funds. At other times, a fundraising milestone passed. And woe betide you if you got anything wrong.

Her extraordinary legacy was not just the scanner but the Lewis-Manning Hospice situated at her home in Crichel Mount Road.

In February, Stephanie Thorne, its legacy officer, will give a talk on The Lewis-Manning Hospice – One Remarkable Woman’s Legacy.

She will speak about the hospice, the woman and the research she has carried out that began with the discovery of documents in a black metal trunk in the attic.

The story began centuries ago for the land was originally part of the Crichel Estate, owned by the Sturt family.

By the early 20th century, there was a house called Evening Hill on the site, occupied in 1923 by a Major Gen Douglas Keith Elphinstone Hall. By the outbreak of the Second World War that house was gone and the new villa built.

But what of Mrs Lewis-Manning?

She was born Marjorie Lloyd in 1903 and the documents unearthed by Stephanie give some insight into her life.

They showed that at one time her address was the Harbour Heights Hotel and they include pension and insurance cards from the 1930s, as well as a Military Control Card dated 1940 when she was living in Sandbanks Road.

Whether she inherited or made her money is unclear but by the early 1940s she not only owned Westover News, the newsagent in Bournemouth, but the Meyrick Mansion Hotel as well.

It stood on the corner of Westover Road, opposite the Royal Bath.

And, in 1946 she bought Evening Hill, the house in Crichel Mount Road where the hospice is now found.

By the early 1950s Marjorie Lloyd’s interests included gardening and breeding wire-haired fox terriers, which she would take to shows.

Then, at the age of 50, her life changed when she married the solicitor Robert Lewis-Manning who, that year, was president of the Bournemouth and District Law Society and had been the defence lawyer in the 1930s in a celebrated trial.

The ceremony took place at the Chapel of the Convent Cross at Boscombe and the couple were together for 16 years until Robert died from cancer. She had cared for him at their Lilliput home.

After her loss, Mrs Lewis-Manning started focusing on helping others coping with cancer.

She began by founding the Poole Cancer Treatment Trust in 1972 and, eight years later, launched the Poole Hospital Body Scanner Appeal.

I can remember people wishing her luck but secretly scoffing, thinking that her £250,000 target was unachievable.

But they didn’t take account of the extraordinary drive and devotion of the hazel-eyed woman who stood 5ft 10 tall in her prime.

The community – individuals, businesses and groups – rallied behind her and the money rolled in.

Often she would turn up in person to thank every fund-raising effort.

She even went to the USA when she heard that a scanner was on the market that was better than the one originally targeted.

And Poole Hospital ended up with the Rolls-Royce of scanners.

On behalf of the trust, she handed over the scanner in April 1984, after parading a wooden model of it from Baiter to Poole Hospital, escorted by police, Royal Marines and majorettes. A million pounds had been raised and the trust carried on fundraising to pay for the running costs, updates and maintenance.

In 1987, at the age of 84, Marjorie Lewis-Manning passed away.

But before she died she had recognised that, as well as diagnosis and treatment, more needed to be done for people who were living with cancer.

“It was her heartfelt wish that her home be adapted and used as a hospice,” said Stephanie. And that is what happened.

In 1992 the Lewis-Manning Hospice opened at her Crichel Mount Road home. And since then it has offered specialist palliative nursing care to numerous people.

Today, the Lewis-Manning Hospice has to raise more than £50,000 every month to cover costs.

And, this year, it launched the Time To Care appeal to raise a further £2.5 million to build a 15-bed residential unit on the hospital grounds, alongside its existing services.

“I wish we had Marjorie here today,” said Stephanie.

“She was a woman who got the community behind her. If she were here she’d be steamrollering ahead!”

l Stephanie Thorne’s talk on Mrs Lewis-Manning and the hospice will take place at 4.30pm on February 11 at the hospice in Crichel Mount Road, Lilliput. Snapshots readers wanting to book a place should contact Stephanie at legacies@ lewis-manning.co.uk or 01202 701000 before February 4.