A Friend of Defective Children
On the occasion of the retirement of Miss Elfrida Rathbone due, we deeply regret to record, to failing health, it is fitting that a tribute should be paid in these pages to the unselfish and devoted service of defective children which she has given over a period of nearly 20 years.
It was in 1919, that she opened, in the King’s Cross district of London, supported by a small Committee, the Lilian Greg Occupation Centre for lowgrade ” ineducable ” children, at a time when such Centres were only just beginning to be regarded as practical possibilities. For three years she was responsible for the Centre until in 1922 it was handed over to the C.A.M.W. by whom it was specially adapted for the purpose of training Supervisors.*
Arising out of this work for low-grade children, Miss Rathbone turned to consider the needs of the higher-grade defectives who were in attendance at the Special Schools in the Islington area. The co-operation of the local L.C.C. District Care Committee Organiser was enlisted, and the Lilian Greg Welfare Committee gradually became the centre of all activity for mentally defective children in the district. Under Miss Rathbone’s inspiration and by means of her personal service the Committee established itself as the friend of the Special *It was subsequently re-named the Agnes Western Centre.
School child, and to its office, and especially to its founder these children have come, confidently seeking help in the problems and difficulties which beset them.
The Annual Report of 1935 tells of Care Committee work for all four Special Schools in the area, of a flourishing Girls’ Club for ex-Special School girls, of a Club for ” married girls ” (found to be sorely needed), of Evening Classes for ex-Special School boys, of Summer Camps and Christmas parties, and of social service of all kinds given to parents and children.
And now the creator and moving spirit of all this beneficent activity has to lay down the burden she so gallantly assumed nearly 20 years ago, and there is a doubt whether the fellow-workers she is leaving will receive in future enough support to enable them to carry on without her. The raising of funds will now devolve on a Committee deprived of its founder’s inexhaustible personal help to this end, and there is no guarantee that their appeal will meet with success, even though the comparatively small sum of ^400 a year is all that is required.
We can imagine that Miss Rathbone would desire no other recognition of her work than this?that enough friends be found to rally round the Committee she has left, so that to it may be accorded “the glory of going on.” Those who would pay her tribute in a retirement which preludes a period of growing physical helplessness, and those who deplore the possible abandonment of an activity created and sustained by the sheer force of her personality, are invited to send a tangible token of their regard in the form of a subscription to the Lilian Greg Welfare Committee, 72, Pentonville Road, London, W.i.
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