A Tribute
C.B.E.
- Author:
The Rt. Hon. LORD JUSTICE SCOTT
President, C.A.M.IV.
When Miss Fox’s name appeared in this year’s Honours List, one H … C … whom she had befriended ever since she had first known him as a Special School boy 24 years ago, rang up our office to congratulate;
” I see the King sent for her. Ain’t she a wonderful woman ! My word, she is ! ! And I ought to know! ! “
Could any words more happily convey the delight, the admiration and the pride of our whole organisation than those simple sentences in which H … C … let his heart overflow? I believe they perfectly express what every one of us who have had the privilege of working with Miss Fox really feels. And the pathos of his final appeal to his own life story touches the very keynote of all the workthat the C A.M.W. and its Local Associations are doing to better the difficult lot in life of every child starting with the handicap of mental deficiency.
My own memories of Miss Fox begin with the year 1912-13 when she and I were active in helping to get the Mental Deficiency Act, 1913, on to the Statute Book. From the outset she realised what a supremely important part voluntary work could play in making the statutory machine produce the human results which Parliament intended. It was she who thought of a ” Central Association ” with local societies affiliated to it, a voluntary organisation covering the whole country and rendering services to every local authority which asked for them?and only if it did ask. It was she who foresaw that this Central Association might become at once the cabinet and the research department of the whole movement, taking major decisions and initiating new experiments in methods of work. And between us we hit on two practical principles of administration which are of the essence of our organisation to-day; the first that the personnel of our executive committees, central and local, should be composed in equal proportions of the voluntary and official elements : and the second, that the areas of the affiliated local associations should be co-terminous with those of the statutory authorities.
On that constructive basis, Miss Fox has built our nation-wide system of services. Si momentum requiris, circumspice! If you seek the outward visible sign of what she has encompassed, read the series of annual reports of the C.A.M.W. and realise how rapid, how thorough and how firm has been the progress, and writh what admirable economy it has been attained. Read our latest report, or the last number of this journal, and realise the fertility of her imagination, her resourcefulness in difficulties, and her shrewdness in proposing new plans at the right time and in the right way.
But there are certain qualities in her which you only realise to the full if you have worked closely with her. She is the wisest woman I know : full of courage, but never failing in tact; how could a woman so naturally modest and so brimful of Irish humour be anything else?
MISS EVELYN FOX, C.B.E.
Hon. Secretary, Central Association for Mental Welfare [Press Photograph taken on leaving Buckingham Palac.e after Investiture. 24.2.37]
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