Edith Urch

Who was Edith Urch?

Edith Laura Urch, known to her friends as Urchie, was an English nurse and charity worker who founded the Ladyeholme Housing Association, a charity for homeless people, and ran it as general secretary until her death.

Urch was born in Russia, although her parents were both from Somerset. Her father, Reginald Urch, was Professor of English at the University of Moscow. Shortly after the Russian Revolution in 1917, her father was arrested and incarcerated in the Lubyanka Prison, and she and her mother hid in a tiny peasant cottage just outside the city. Eventually, in 1920, her father was released, and the family returned to England. She remembered her experiences of poverty in Russia all her life, and these contributed to her founding of Ladyeholme. Her father later returned to the area as Russian and Baltic correspondent of The Times, based in Riga, Latvia.

Urch was educated in England and France and then joined the Poor Clares as a postulant. However, she decided that her vocation was in nursing and left the order, qualifying as a State Registered Nurse and later also as a State Certified Midwife. She eventually rose to become sister-tutor at the Charing Cross Hospital in London.