Eugenie Cheesmond

Visionary drugs activist who founded the Lifeline Project in 1971

When I first met Eugenie, I was just recently clean. I'd been reading Yablonsky's Tunnel Back about Synanon and wondering whether anything quite that exciting, quite that radical, could ever happen in the UK. Then all of a sudden - whoosh - there was Eugenie! Full of the same enthusiasms and fired with more energy to make ideas happen than is fair for one person. She taught me much of what I know about addiction and recovery and fired me with an enthusiasm which has sustained me in my work for the past 35 years. We worked together at the Lifeline Project (then the Lifeline Trust) for 5 years using TC methodology in a non-residential context. She was a huge inspiration to many of us in those early days of the addiction field with an unwavering belief in the power of the individual to grow, change and recover.

Rowdy Yates

Senior Research Fellow, Scottish Addiction Studies, University of Stirling
Vice-President, European Federation of Therapeutic Communities

I'd like to highlight Lifeline's work in the development of innovative and credible materials to support drugs awareness/education. As a worker with drugs and youth information projects in Glasgow during 1990s I was bombarded with requests for ‘Lifeline info' or ‘Peanut Pete' leaflets. Establishment of an ethos whereby information of this quality can be produced is ultimately the result of good leadership and direction from bold and committed individuals. My understanding is that Eugenie Cheesmond was able to instill this ethos in Lifeline's work from the onset.

Stephen Birrell

Senior Policy Officer, Glasgow Community and Safety Services

I would like to add my own tribute to a woman who was a significant force during troubled times in my life, and whose unstinting support went far beyond any reasonable expectations.  For a time she invited me into her home, sharing it with a large white dog 'PB' or Polar Bear, and assorted rescued road accident cats; some with prosthetic limbs carved from scraps of wood or bowels fashioned from plastic bags - the results of her own surgical skills.  It would be easy to pigeon-hole Eugenie as an eccentric (as some did) with views on organic food, holistic treatment, and a common sense view of addiction that was out of step with the narrow orthodoxy of the of the time.  However, she did prevail, and much of the world caught up later! If you want to see her modernity during her Lifeline years, then look at her dress sense, a fusion of of ethnic fabrics and styles, that would be as much a fashion statement today as it was a political message then. Farewell to someone for whom I have great affection. 

David Tomlinson

Chair, T3E (UK) Ltd
Formerly Chief Executive, Phoenix House UK

Dr Eugenie Cheesmond, who has just died at the age of 88, was a remarkable woman in many ways. She qualified in medicine in South Africa but left in disgust at the apartheid regime and spent most of her life in the UK. She became interested in drug users whilst working in Parkside Mental Hospital in Macclesfield. She was appalled at the few and inappropriate services available to people with problem drug use and, characteristically, she set about doing something about.

Her decision to allow in- patients to stay in her hospital house upset the authorities and she moved on to set up, with her friend Mary Gluckman, the Lifeline Trust. She wooed, bullied and charmed support from many sources, including church people, affluent friends of friends and Health service budget holders to get some money together to open a day centre and she recruited volunteers, many of them ex-users, to staff it. She herself worked there for practically nothing. From this shoestring beginning we have inherited Lifeline, one of the foremost drug agencies in the country and one with an international reputation.

Eugenie had many other causes that she championed. She worked for anti-apartheid causes until the demise of the racist South African regime, she set up an Oxfam shop, she defended the respect and dignity of older people in residential care when working as a senior clinical medical officer iin Lancashire and she was always there for people who needed somewhere to live or other support.

Eugenie was a colourful and much loved character who will be sorely missed by many. Let us hope that those who follow her in the drug field and many other fields will be able to match her dedication, persistence and humanity.

Joyce Leeson

Formerly Consultant in Public Health, Manchester Health Authority

I met Eugenie Cheesmond at times when she visited Phoenix House, in London, accompanying persons entering treatment or simply seeing how things were. Although I did not know her well, she struck me then as a dynamic woman, full of life and determination. Remembering those times, she was an inspiration to talk with. It is no surprise that she and not just her work inspired many others to take risks and follow in her footsteps to get things done.

In “If It Weren't for the Alligators”, Rowdy Yates refers to her dream which established Lifeline, but more than a dream she was instrumental in guiding many people towards a better life.

A true pioneer.

Anthony Slater

Director, Phoenix Haga, Norway
President, European Federation of Therapeutic Communities

A couple of years ago, after a fairly heated debate in a TV studio about the way our society treats people who use drugs - the man I had been arguing with approached me. “Lifeline, that's the organisation founded by Eugenie Cheesmond isn't it?", he said, “I met her recently. She's in her eighties now, but she's still a fiery old bird”.

Dr Cheesmond left Lifeline before I started working for the charity, so I never had the pleasure of meeting her. However, I wasn't at all surprised at this man's, somewhat politically incorrect, description of our founder, in fact I felt quite proud of her and the organisation that she started.

Lifeline has grown enormously since 1971 and although it has changed in many ways, I hope what it will never lose is the courage to stand up for the needs and rights of the poorest and most marginalised group of people in our society - drug users.

And if that makes us unpopular at times or we get called fiery (we've been called a lot worse) then so be it. We are just carrying on in the spirit that Eugenie instilled in the organisation from the beginning.

I hope she would have been proud of what she started.

Michael Linnell

Director of Communications
Lifeline

Some photographs from the funeral available here

Download an Obituary from the Rossendale Free Press here

Eugenie Hilda Dorothy Cheesmond , Founder of the Lifeline Project, drugs expert and inspiration, born June 13 1919; died October 11 2007

Please send any contributions and memories to: p.r.yates@stir.ac.uk

View other TC pioneer remembrance pages here