Baroness Masham of Ilton
Paralympic swimming and table-tennis medallist who championed the rights of the disabled
BARONESS MASHAM OF ILTON, the Dowager Countess of Swinton, who has died aged 87, survived a triple fracture of her spine in a point-to-point accident aged 22 to lead the fullest of lives from her wheelchair.
She became not only a multiple Paralympic medallist and a champion of causes concerning disability, but a campaigner on many other issues after being created a life peeress in 1970; by her death she was the longest-serving female member of the Lords.
Lady Masham founded the Spinal Injuries Association in 1975, serving as its president from 1982; she also promoted Bills obliging young riders to wear protective headgear; fought the means-testing of disability benefits; and as an enthusiastic motorist championed the rights of disabled drivers.
She was active also on child welfare, drug abuse, penal reform and Aids, and her schedule was more energetic than that of most fully mobile people. She was a borstal visitor, and in 1971 one of 47 members of Lord Longford’s commission on pornography.
Always down to earth, Lady Masham stressed that the disabled had basic needs: to be able to get in and out of one’s house and public buildings, use the lavatory, have access to transport, and have enough money to live on. The most infuriating building for her was the European Commission in Brussels, where every lavatory door was too narrow for a wheelchair.
It was in March 1958 that Susan Sinclair broke her back when she was thrown at the fourth fence and her mount fell on top of her. She sustained three fractured vertebrae, a suspected fractured skull and broken ribs; she was eternally grateful she had been wearing a riding hat.
A doctor said that even if she lived through the night she would never move again. But after nine months of therapy at Stoke Mandeville under Sir Ludwig Guttmann she emerged paralysed from the chest down, but a symbol of hope. More than one fellow paraplegic stuck in hospital sent her the message: “Sue, get me out of here.”
In 1970 she was created Baroness Masham of Ilton, of Masham in the North Riding of the County of York – at 35, the youngest life peer up to then. She and her husband, who succeeded to the Earldom of Swinton on the death of his grandfather in 1972, became one of the few couples each to hold a title in their own right.
While her gifts and her drive were remarkable, she was quick to acknowledge her husband’s support. They were about to be engaged when her accident put her in a wheelchair, but “despite the extent of my injuries we never thought of not marrying. It was a particularly big decision for him.”
For many months Lord Masham, as he then was, helped to nurse her back to health, even trying to teach her to walk. Married in December 1959, they lived in a specially adapted singlestorey home on the Swinton estate.
Though they still hoped for children, they adopted a girl and a boy. Her greatest difficulty, she confided, was lifting her six-month-old son before he learnt to sit up.
Over three Paralympics, in 1960 (Rome, where she briefly lost her gold medal in a restaurant), 1964 (Tokyo) and 1968 (Tel Aviv), Lady Masham won a gold and four silver medals in swimming, and a gold, two silvers and two bronzes in table tennis. Few of the venues were suitable; in Rome the Paralympic village was built on stilts, and the Italian army had to carry in the 400 wheelchairs.
When they were travelling abroad in 1980, the Earl threatened to lie down in front of the aircraft when it looked set to take off without her. “My luggage was aboard, and my wheelchair, and in the end the ambulancemen carried me on,” she said with pride.
In the Lords she complained that a woman with multiple sclerosis had had to bump her way down an aircraft’s steps “on her behind” to reach the ground transport provided.
In January 1985 Lady Masham found herself questioning her husband from the crossbenches in his capacity as deputy Government chief whip. This unique occasion was upstaged by the Earl of Stockton (Harold Macmillan) launching an outspoken attack on Margaret Thatcher. Five years later, Lady Masham and the Earl voted different ways on the War Crimes Bill.
She swam, still rode occasionally, bred Highland ponies and ran the Masham Riding Centre in North Yorkshire. In February 1976 she was the subject of This is Your Life, Eamonn Andrews ambushing her in the foyer of a Kensington hotel.
Lady Masham was a prominent Roman Catholic convert, and a patron of the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology.
She was born Susan Lilian Primrose Sinclair in Caithness on April 14 1935, the daughter of Sir Ronald Sinclair, 8th Baronet, and the former Reba Inglis. Educated at Heathfield and London Polytechnic, she took up a career in voluntary work.
Created a life peeress on the recommendation of Harold Wilson, she joined Lord Ingleby (disabled by polio), Lord Crawshaw (riding accident) and Lady Darcy de Knayth (car crash) in helping through the 1970 Chronic Sick and Disabled Persons Act.
They were joined in 1973 by the Duke of Buccleuch, disabled by a riding accident two years before when a member of the Commons. In January 1981 they secured a record wheelchair turn-out for the Lords’ debate on the International Year of the Disabled.
Plans to cut the number of beds at an overstretched Stoke Mandeville incensed Lady Masham, and she joined forces with Ludwig Guttmann, founder of the centre, to secure a reprieve. In January 1979 she wrote to The Daily Telegraph: “The condition into which the centre has been allowed to fall is a national scandal.”
In 1987 she headed a Home Office working group on young people and alcohol which recommended bans on public drinking by under-18s, and on drinks advertisements on television. She rated the Government’s response “disappointing”. Two years later she campaigned successfully with Lord Swinfen for the “right to buy” to be extended to disabled people whose homes had been specially adapted for them.
Lady Masham was at various times president of the North Yorkshire Red Cross, Yorkshire Association for the Disabled, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the Countrywide Workshops Charitable Trust; she was also vice-president of the British Sports Association for the Disabled, the British Disabled Drivers’ Trust, the Association of Occupational Therapists and Action for Dysphasic Adults. She chaired the drug rehabilitation charity Phoenix House and was a member of Peterlee & Newton Aycliffe New Town Corporation.
In the Lords, she was vice-chairman of all-party committees on drug misuse and Aids, and a member of the Select Committee on Science & Technology. In 2011 she was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Nursing. She was appointed deputy lieutenant for North Yorkshire in 1991.
Her husband died in 2006. Lady Masham is survived by her adopted son and daughter; the earldom passed to her husband’s younger brother.
Baroness Masham, born April 14 1935, died March 12 2023