Obituary: Della Ryness-Hirsch

Della Ryness-Hirsch, who died aged 81 on 13 March 2026, was a businesswoman, community volunteer, and a campaigner who sought to get justice for the infected and affected victims of the contaminated blood scandal.

She became well known in Fitzrovia after opening the colourful and beautiful furnishings store, Nice Irma’s, on the corner of Goodge Street and Charlotte Street. A business she had set up with her husband Daniel Hirsch in the 1970s.

Along with her sister Lynne Featherstone, she also became a director of Ryness Electrical, which had a shop on Goodge Street, when the two of them took over the business from their father and mother. The shop closed in 2020.

Always interested in the world and the people around her, she took a turn for some years volunteering as chair of the Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association. She kept a tight rein on the often lively meetings held on the ground floor of 39 Tottenham Street, to which she also donated furnishings in an effort to make the old and rickety former glass shop more comfortable.

She was born in London in 1944 to Joseph and Gladys Ryness. Her parents later founded Ryness Electrical Supplies with the first shop opening on Goodge Street in 1961.

It was a go-to for light-bulbs, and a multitude of small electrical goods. The company expanded to more than a dozen stores across London and the UK at its peak of high-street trading.

At the time of incorporating the company, the family were living at 29 Highpoint, North Hill, Highgate. This was in one of the two tower blocks designed by Lubetkin and Tecton, and Ove Arup, and built between 1935 and 1938.

After leaving school Ryness went to live in San Fransico, California, where she met her future husband and business partner Daniel Hirsch, who was originally from New York.

She returned to London in 1972 with Daniel, where they got married. They first lived at Shepherd’s Bush, later moving to Highgate.

Together they opened Nice Irma’s in 1972. The shop first stocked water beds and hippy furnishings. Later it became well-known for inexpensive Asian-inspired textiles, sheepskin coats, home accessories, rugs and jewellery. It closed in 1998.

In 1976 she gave birth to twin boys, Jake and Nick. Shortly after his birth Nick was diagnosed with haemophilia, a rare condition that prevented his blood from clotting naturally.

The story of Nick’s life and death would be recalled by Ryness when she gave testimony at the Infected Blood Inquiry in May 2019.

She told the Inquiry that in 1978 a friend from San Francisco had warned her about infected blood from paid donors being used to develop medical treatments.

This information was passed immediately to Great Ormond Street Hospital who were treating Nick where she insisted — in no uncertain terms — that he was not to receive any American blood products. The hospital eventually agreed to only give UK-made Factor VIII blood products to Nick.

When the Aids pandemic hit, the Department for Health was urged by campaigners to ensure all Factor VIII blood products were heat treated to prevent infections from being transferred.

Ryness wrote a letter to the Guardian newspaper warning about the dangers of contaminated blood. After it was published, she was contacted by Great Ormond Street Hospital and asked to come in for a chat.

She was told that all the children had been tested for viruses and that Nick was the only one who did not have HIV. “I didn’t even know that Nick had been tested. It was completely and utterly outrageous,” she told the Inquiry.

Ryness then transferred Nick to the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead but Great Ormond Street refused to release his medical notes.

Eventually a sympathetic nurse got hold of the notes and handed them to Ryness in the street. On reading them she discovered that the Great Ormond Street notes had scrawled across them “Neurotic Mother” — a reference to her demand that Nick should not be treated with American blood products.

“That summed up the way we were treated by the medical profession,” she told the Inquiry.

In 1990 Nick tested positive for hepatitis C, and in 1997 he was told he had been exposed to the CJD virus by a contaminated blood product. He died in 2011, aged 35.

Her husband Daniel died in 2023.

“In recent years she faced Alzheimer’s disease with courage. Those who knew her will remember both her strength of character and her warmth and kindness. May she rest in power,” stated the announcement of her death in the Ham & High newspaper.

Adele Lois Ryness-Hirsch: born April 1944; died 13 March 2026.

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