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Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Obituary

Ronald E. Sturt 1921–2003Ronald Sturt, whose death on January 6th thisyear we mourn, and whose life we celebrate, wasone of the great originators of our profession. Hewas one of the ‘gang of four’ who combined toform the first association of librarians interested inwork with hospitals and with the disabled in thecommunity. The others were Mona Going, whoalso died this year, the Kent County Hospitalslibrarian, Jean Clarke, then librarian of St.Thomas’ Hospital, and Joy Lewis, then at theNational Hospitals for Nervous Diseases. Thiswas in 1961 and it was Ronald’s letter to theLibrary Association Record which led to thefirst meeting of what became the LA HospitalLibraries and Handicapped Readers Group.Ronald was then District Librarian for Mid-Hertsand was providing a pioneering service to patientsat a psychiatric hospital. He had also been askedby the NHS to design an integrated library for thenew ‘best-buy’ hospital, the Queen Elizabeth IIHospital, Welwyn Garden City. Ronald becameVice-Chairman of the Group, Mona was Chairman,Jean was Secretary and Joy was Treasurer. The restis history: standards, a journal (Ronald was thefirst editor of Book Trolley, one of the ancestors ofthis journal), conferences, pressure on the NHS, onpublic libraries, and a ‘great leap forward’ duringthe 60s and 70s of services to patients and staff ofhospitals and to the disabled in the community

Meanwhile, Ronald had moved into libraryeducation, first on secondment to the then North-Western Polytechnic, then in 1964 to the Collegeof Librarianship Wales, head-hunted to joinFrank Hogg in the establishment of that remark-able institution. By the time he left in 1972, the orig-inal 40 students had grown to 400 and the campushad been built. As the staff member liaising withthe architects, it can be said that CLW library inparticular is another of his legacies. He hadbeen LA examiner (with Mona) for the HospitalLibraries paper and developed his teaching in

the subject at CLW, courses which I inherited in1967.

As the originator of the UK Talking Newspapermovement, Sturt has been justly celebrated and hisachievement recognized. It grew from his MAstudies for University College London, whichincluded a visit to Sweden where he found publiclibraries providing local newspapers on tape toblind people in their communities. On his return,he talked enthusiastically about these services to,among others, the Aberystwyth Round Table. Hewas challenged to ‘do something about it’. He did.He recruited volunteers and interested the editorsof the two county newspapers and on January 1st1970 launched the first issue of the CardiganshireTalking Newspaper to 18 local blind ‘readers’.From there it grew to the 250 readers who nowreceive it, but more important, it spread by osmo-sis, first to the next county, and then all over thecountry. As early as 1974 for there were enoughlocal Talking Newspapers to form the TalkingNewspaper Association of the United King-dom(TNAUK), with Ronald as Chairman—andlater President. It was an epic achievement.

In 1972 Sturt was appointed chief librarian ofthe City of London Polytechnic and was soon pro-moted to Vice Provost. On a 2-year secondment,1974–6, he founded the National Bureau for

Obituary

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Handicapped Students (now SKILL). Among hislast acts before retiring in 1981 from City (nowLondon Guildhall University) he set in train thetransfer of the Fawcett Library, which he had knownin the Great Smith Street Branch in Westminster,to City to form the recently opened Women’s Library.

Ronald Sturt was born in Chobham in 1921,went to Woking Grammar School on a scholar-ship and began a career in accountancy in 1939.Tuberculosis led to a period in sanatoria and musthave laid the foundations for his life-long commit-ment to reading and books. In 1947 he enteredlibrarianship in Haslemere as a Surrey CountyBranch Librarian, in 1952 spent a year at Brightonlibrary school, and in 1953 joined the staff ofWestminster City Libraries, where within a year hehad become the first secretary of the Libraries StaffGuild, and soon after, in 1954, left for Herts County.

He was twice married with a daughter, grand-daughter and grandsons from the first, and in 1961he married Felicity Page, another librarian, withwhom he had a daughter and two sons and fourgrandchildren. In 1990, Felicity, a Lib. Dem.

Councillor in Chelmsford, became Mayor andRonald rejoiced to be known as ‘Mr Mayoress’.In that same year he received the MBE. Otherhonours included the Grimshaw Memorial Awardfrom the National Federation of the Blind andhonorary degrees from the Open University andfrom London Guildhall University.

Those of us who knew and worked with RonaldSturt will miss his broad smile, his unruffled calm,his wide-ranging intelligence and his personalkindness. He was a staunch Methodist and fit-tingly a Memorial Service was held at his church inChelmsford on 11th March this year. He was, as heonce wrote of hospital and welfare librarianship,‘multifaceted, brilliantly differentiated’. He madea difference, he left the world a better place than hefound it.

David Matthews(formerly, Principal Lecturer, CLW;

one-time Chairman & Secretary,Hospital Libraries &

Handicapped readers Group)