My mother, Miriam Harrison, who has died aged 89, was a pioneer in the unfashionable field of geriatrics.
In her book Growing Old in Common Lodgings (1954), she interviewed older men in reduced circumstances, determining how they had fallen through the net. It concluded that, despite the foundation of the welfare state, many of these men, a neglected group in society, remained unaware of their new entitlements. It also celebrated what Miriam called the “whimsical quality of dignified independence” among some of the “most loquacious old reprobates”.
She was born in Belfast to Fred and Ethel Sargaison. Fred survived the battle of the Somme to work in the Ministry of Agriculture, setting up a free milk scheme for mothers and babies. Ethel (nee Connolly), known as Gaggie, was a volunteer for Missions to Seamen, who could recall Queen Victoria’s visit to Dublin in 1900, when she was four.
Educated at Strathearn school and Victoria College in Belfast, Miriam studied social science at Trinity College, Dublin, before training as a hospital almoner at St Mary’s, Paddington, London.
From 1949 to 1955 she worked at Belfast City hospital under Professor George Adams, developing many of the principles that underpin care of the elderly today, such as a closer multi-agency approach to supporting older people living independently, combating loneliness and reducing the number of healthy older people in hospitals because there is nowhere else for them to go.
In 1953 she won a UN travel scholarship, spending several months in Paris studying the French approach to managing old age. She returned in awe of Gallic spending levels.
In 1954, at a dance, she met Edwin Harrison, who had worked as a reporter on the Belfast Telegraph before moving to London to become a BBC radio news editor. Edwin was later to run the BBC’s journalist training scheme, which produced, among others, the current director general, Tony Hall, and Jeremy Paxman, Kate Adie and Nicholas Witchell.
After their wedding in 1955, the couple moved to Kingston upon Thames, then in Surrey, to a house in which she lived until her death. After my sisters, Claire and Lucy, and I reached school age, she returned to work, as the medical social worker in geriatrics at Barnes hospital, where she stayed for 25 years. On retirement she became residents’ advocate for Richmond Churches Housing Trust, touring residential and care homes and feeding back comments to managers. After her second retirement, aged 79, she ran the Evergreens senior citizens’ group in Kingston.
A phenomenal baker (chocolate cakes a speciality), she was a steward at the National Trust’s Ham House in Richmond upon Thames, and was an expert embroiderer.
Edwin died in 2001. Miriam is survived by her children.
