Hope Winch

Hope Constance Monica Winch was strong-willed and full of big ideas. She arrived in Sunderland in her long white coat, mixing tinctures, stirring medicines and rustling folders crammed with plans to set up the finest pharmacy department in the North East.

It was a daunting job, but Hope set about organising meetings and arranging classrooms at Sunderland Technical College, which later became Sunderland University. Her first students were two women and 25 ex-servicemen. They all squeezed onto a double-sided bench in the Chemistry school, shifting around in their seats as chemicals fizzed and smoked in the glare of Bunsen burners. Hope taught the entire course herself and treated all of her students as equals, narrowing her eyes at rude jokes and making space for everyone to speak.

By 1930, Hope’s pharmacy department was a big success. All of the pharmacy teaching in the region was moved to her lab, and it became known as the best place to study. Students came from all over the country to look at the shifting surfaces of cells shimmering through microscopes and to understand the composition of compounds coursing through the human body.

Hope’s legacy helped the university grow into the excellent pharmacy department that exists today, and students still flock from across the country to understand the substances that hold our world together.