My friend Elizabeth Herridge, who has died aged 77 of motor neurone disease, accompanied her husband as a “diplomatic wife” for many years, enjoying the pleasures, trials and tribulations of postings including Prague, Nairobi and Lagos, and Chennai in south India.
It was while in Chennai, between 1999 and 2003, that Elizabeth’s interest in healthcare and her strong desire to help others resulted in a project that changed the lives of many disabled children and adults.
Elizabeth first became involved with physically disabled children through her work as a volunteer teaching English at the Andhra Mahila Sabha, a voluntary, non-profit, non-government organisation that ran a residential school for polio-afflicted children of poor parents, as well as a vocational rehabilitation centre for girls. She saw how hard it was for these children to move around and the difficulties of getting appropriate wheelchairs for them in Chennai.
She discovered that inmates at the high-security Garth prison in Lancashire were part of a charity, the Inside Out Trust, running community workshops in prisons including refurbishing second-hand wheelchairs. After she approached Garth prison, the scheme took off with enthusiasm and hundreds of disabled children and adults in Chennai received a tailor-made wheelchair, specific for their size and requirements. Elizabeth personally took all the measurements.
Born in New Milton, Hampshire, Elizabeth was adopted as a baby by Lilian (nee Saltaire), a secretary, and Basil Bramble, a postman. She went to Ashley secondary school in New Milton, then started work at Lymington town hall. There she became better acquainted with Michael Herridge, whom she knew from school, and after Michael left for London in 1966 to join the diplomatic service, Elizabeth followed the next year, having got a job with the Greater London council.
They married in 1968 and were posted to Prague in 1969, serving under Russian occupation for three years. Elizabeth, a qualified Pitman’s secretary, also worked in the embassy, as she was to do in subsequent postings, and their daughter, Georgina, was born in 1971. Periods in Kenya and Nigeria followed and then postings to the UK delegation to the UN in New York and to Madrid and to Chennai, where Michael was deputy high commissioner.
After retirement in 2003, Elizabeth and Michael lived in the Exe valley just outside Dulverton, Somerset, with horses, a few sheep, pygmy goats, dogs and rescued battery chickens. After 10 years of “the good life” they moved to Cheddar, where they enjoyed mains water and sewerage, neighbours, street lights and pavements, and were closer to their daughter and her family in Bristol.
In later life Elizabeth obtained a diploma in health and social welfare from the Open University. She organised patient groups in Dulverton and Cheddar, and was a founding member of a young people’s mental health support group called the Space, now a standalone charity.
She will be remembered for her persistence in getting things done, her empathy for the less fortunate and her sense of humour. She is survived by Michael, Georgina and two grandsons.
