Margaret Chadd
Wartime work with the plastic surgeon Archibald Macindoe
MARGARET CHADD, who has died aged 96, was a hospital almoner who worked with the great plastic surgeon Archibald Macindoe at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, during the war, and later campaigned to improve services for the dying and bereaved.
She was born Margaret Ruth Collett on June 7 1922. At the outbreak of war, she trained as an assistant almoner at the Princess Beatrice Hospital, London.
In 1941 she was appointed Lady Almoner to the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital, where she was involved in helping Archibald Macindoe in patching up and rehabilitating airmen and civilian bomb casualties suffering from severe burns.
This meant dealing with the rehabilitation of all nationalities of service personnel and civilians who had often lost everything in bombing raids. She obtained clothing coupons for them, and helped with their finances and finding jobs. In addition she arranged education for children who were in hospital for an extended period.
When in 1943 the East Grinstead cinema received a direct bomb hit, she and the other hospital staff worked for 48 hours non-stop, identifying the dead, sorting out the injured and those who needed nursing care from the 108 casualties and dealing with the emotional trauma that followed.
After the war Margaret read Social Sciences at London University followed by a year with the Institute of Hospital Almoners and experience in major hospitals around the country. Afterwards she was appointed county almoner at East Sussex County Council.
In 1949 she met and later married Colonel George Chadd, who had left the Army to take over a family department store business.
The best man at their wedding was Edward Heath, who became godfather to Christopher, the eldest of their four sons. Christopher would be drowned aged 23 in September 1973 while crewing on Heath’s yacht Morning Cloud when it sank in a storm.
Two years later tragedy struck again when their third son, Timothy, was killed aged 21 in a road accident in France.
Instead of collapsing under the grief, Margaret Chadd took a counselling course in London and in 1978 launched the Waveney and North Suffolk branch of the bereavement charity Cruse (the first in Suffolk), offering services to all bereaved people. She continued to run it until 1992, established four other branches in the county and supported bereaved parents through the voluntary organisation Compassionate Friends.
She served as a magistrate and later vice chairman of the Lowestoft Bench and was a founder trustee of Pact, a mediation and conciliation service.
On moving to Southwold in 1977 she became the Red Cross Medical Loan Officer for that area and later served as vice president of the British Red Cross Society. Other committee work included the county Disablement Advisory War Pensions Welfare Committee and the Exservices War Disabled Committee.
She was nominated for membership of the Women of the Year Association, and in 1982 attended the annual lunch in London at which she met the Princess of Wales.
She also undertook research into her family history, publishing the fruits of her research for the family in 1989 as The Collett Saga. In 1990 she was appointed MBE.
As chairman of Waveney Hospice Care she led the early stages of a campaign to build a much-needed local hospice. The hospice, to be built on land at Gorleston, will be named after her.
A keen tennis player and skier, Margaret Chadd recently featured in the television series Tales from the Coast, as the oldest beach hut owner at Southwold, where she swam regularly into her eighties.
She is survived by her two remaining sons.
Margaret Chadd, born June 7 1922, died July 14 2018