Winnie Anderson, one of the first nurses to work at the now defunct Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital, has celebrated her 102nd birthday.
Winnie Anderson was born Winnie Collie in Forfar on September 3, 1906. Her father was former Angus Constabulary police constable Joseph Collie.
She attended Forfar Academy, before going on to work in Dundee's famous jute mills.
She began her n
ursing training at Dundee's Kings Cross Hospital, before being transferred up to Invergordon and eventually ending up in Leith Hospital.
Winnie then went on to serve 20 years at Fairmilehead and met her husband, postal worker Robert Anderson, on the ward.
She said: "My mother and his mother were in adjacent beds in the hospital, and they got chatting and there was a wee bit of matchmaking going on."
She was drafted in to work at the Fairmilehead hospital upon its opening in 1932, when it was originally named the Edinburgh Hospital for Crippled Children. Despite being primarily a children's hospital, Winnie remembers how they would take in injured men and women of all ages during the Second World War air raids on the city.
She said: "We just did everything we could to help them."
The hospital was eventually expanded during the Korean War, and by the end of the 1950s it had grown to become the Princess Margaret Rose Orthopaedic Hospital.
The hospital closed its doors for good in 1998.
Winnie gave up nursing full time after she met her husband, but continued to volunteer at private clinics.
One of her patients at the time was the daughter of one of the largest private landlords in Edinburgh, the Gumleys.
She said: "After we married we moved up to Parkhead Loan.
"Because of the good treatment I gave Mr Gumley's daughter he gave us the pick of the houses."
Gumleys of Edinburgh dated back to 1898, and in 1989 merged with the much older Speirs Parnie of Glasgow to become the entity now known as Spiers Gumley.
Winnie is a lifelong volunteer at St Aiden's Church, regularly attending services and donating to collections and charity appeals.
A staunch Tory, Winnie also campaigned for the party in her more active days, forming a close friendship with former foreign secretary and Pentlands MP Malcolm Rifkind.
Mr Rifkind sent her a letter on her hundredth birthday thanking her for her service to the party.
Winnie still takes an active role in organising events at Chesser Sheltered Housing, where she's lived these past 14 years.
Friends and staff threw her a party of her own to celebrate her birthday on Wednesday.
The full article contains 442 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
