Elspeth Webster DCS
Deaconess, last surviving link to the Church of Scotland’s Church Sisters
Elspeth Webster DCS, deaconess. Born: 16 November 1915 in Burntisland. Died: 1 April 2019 in Windygates, Fife, aged 103
Asa little girls he witnessed the lights of the ships in the Forth signaling the end of the Great War. As a nonagenarian she mastered the internet: such was the span of her indefatigably well-lived life.
And virtually all of it was spent caring for others. For Elspeth Webster, hers was a life of service to the church and her community, wherever that might be.
Though her roots were in Burntisland, she began her working life in Aberdeen and served in numerous parts of the country, both affluent and poverty-ridden, as deaconess and the last surviving link to the Church of Scotland’s Church Sisters.
Born in 1915, the elder daughter of dockyard coal trimmer George Webster and his wife Maggie, she was educated at Burnt island primary and dunfermline High but left school at 17 on the death of her mother. Having planned to train as a teacher she found herself caring for her younger brother Jim and sister Margaret.
Already involved with the local church, youth and drama groups, at 21 she wrote to an orphanage at Bridge of Weir hoping to work with children. However her minister visited her father and suggested she train as a Church Sister, a role now known as a deaconess, which involved helping with parish work under the Women’s Home Mission committee.
She passed the interview and started her training at St Colm’s College, Edinburgh in 1938, a time she described as the best years of her life. Appointed to the parish of
John Knox Church in Aberdeen in 1940, she became a Church Sister in March the following year after completing six months’ probation.
At the time tuberculosis was prevalent and she worked with the city’s poor, operating the equivalent of today’s food banks and distributing produce provided by Church Guilds. The Second World War was also raging and, with the church hall turned into a rest centre, she helped the community shelter there from bombing raids, organising tea and beds for locals.
In 1944 she was posted to Edinburgh’s St George’s where she stayed for six years. Her role again involved working with impoverished families, many of them in cramped
housing. She also helped with organisations for youngsters, established a boys’ club and took girls to summer camp at Leven.
Deaconesses then lived in digs and she recalled going to a ball – attended by the newlyengaged and elegantly-attired Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip – wearing a dress borrowed from her landlady.
Miss Webster, who was the last president of the Church Sisters’ Association, was involved in the transition of the group from church sisters to amalgamation with deaconesses. When she handed over the badge of office to the first president of the Diaconate Council, her minister at the time, Dr Charles Taylor, commented that the change of title would make no difference to her and her varied and efficient services.
“She gets through an amazing amount of work carried out in a quiet gracious manner and animated by love for all whom she may be able to help. She has drawn to herself the love of all who have come to know her and who are grateful for her unselfish service. We give her gladly the new name, but she is still the same Miss Elspeth Webster.”
St George’s keenly felt their loss when she moved on firstly to Edinburgh’s Gilmerton and then to Mains of Fintry, Dundee. After a period of further training in Birmingham, she returned to Scotland in 1965, to Burnhead Church in Uddingston and then to the Kirk of the Holy Rood, Grangemouth where she concentrated more on training elders and Sunday School teachers.
At this time she adopted a more progressive outlook, experimenting with methods ofworshipanddifferentmusic, striving to make the message more relevant in changing times. Here she started a playgroup and Girls’ Brigade company and took her work into the school classroom.
Her last four years before retirement in 1975 were spent at Rosyth where she was involved in visiting homes and schools and in the Sunday School, Brownies and Guides.
But it had not been all work – she enjoyed trips to Oberammergau, albeit on a very short shoestring, a study tour to the Holy Land and a theology conference in Sweden.
She took up golf, read widely, holidayed in Florida with her sister, did a daily crossword and refused to think of herself as old, maintaining a keen interest in world affairs and mastering new technology. At 93 she acquired a laptop computer and was thrilled to be able to watch the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, live from the comfort her own home.
A deaconess to the end, just two days before she died she quoted from Timothy 4:1-8 saying she had “fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”.
She is survived by her nieces Ann and Eileen.
“She has drawn to herself the love of all who have come to know her and who are grateful for her unselfish service”