Sue Ryder CMG, OBE was a humanitarian dedicated to the relief of suffering. She worked to support people with complex needs and life-threatening conditions internationally, and led many charitable organisations including the one named in her honour.
Ryder was born in 1924 in Leeds. As a child, she helped her mother provide help for people in the slums around Leeds. Following the outbreak of World War II, she volunteered for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry at the age of 15, lying about her age to enlist. Ryder was soon assigned to the Polish section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE were responsible for espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance against the Axis powers. Ryder served in Poland, North Africa, Italy and eventually Germany and saw the true devastation that the war had caused, including entering concentration camps.
After the war, Ryder volunteered to stay on in Poland and worked to find homes from those displaced during the war. Without her help, they would have had to resort to theft due to starvation and been arrested. Ryder later began bringing survivors from the concentration camps to England. Most of whom were sick and would require long term nursing. Ryder set them up in her mother’s house in Cavendish, Suffolk and the first Sue Ryder Home was born. In 1953, she founded the Sue Ryder Foundation in order to provide homes and domiciliary care teams for the sick and disabled internationally. Now simply named Sue Ryder, the charity operates more than 80 homes worldwide and has around 500 high street charity shops and 8,000 volunteers.
In 1979, Ryder was made a life peer, becoming Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, of Warsaw in Poland and of Cavendish in the County of Suffolk. She continued to support those in Poland whenever the need arose, and in 1989 she raised £40,000 through the Lady Ryder of Warsaw Appeals Fund and arranged lorries of medical and food air when communist rule in the country collapsed.
In 1998, she retired as a trustee and left Sue Ryder after a dispute with the other trustees. Two years later, she founded The Bouverie Trust (now known as The Lady Ryder of Warsaw Memorial Trust) to continue her charitable work. That same year, she died at the age of 77. Ryder was honoured for her humanitarian work during her lifetime, being appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1957 and appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1976. In 2016, it was announced that she would be honoured with a postage stamp by Royal Mail to celebrate her humanitarian work and the legacy she left behind.