Adele W. Morrison

Another loss through death has been added to those which the Hampstead Clinic has suffered in recent years. However, while on former occasions we found ourselves without one of our main workers, heads of department or Trustees, this time the Clinic's friend who died in August 1980 had remained unknown to the Clinic's staff, while working quietly in the background in a manner which decisively shaped the Clinic's organisation and determined its growth.

Adele Morrison was an unusual person, her career also an unusual one. She began as private secretary to Mr Grant, the wealthy owner of the well-known chain of Grant Stores in America. She became fascinated by his decision to establish a charitable organisation with his firm's money and became the new Foundation's Executive Secretary, a role for which her personality was eminently suited. When in 1957 the needs of our Clinic were brought to her notice, she was impressed by our aims and endeavours, and from then onwards she was instrumental in making the Grant Foundation responsible for our Service departments such as the Baby Clinic, Nursery School, hospital work for other Institutions, etc. She read our Annual Reports with interest and approved of the way in which we spent the Foundation's money. She was critical only once when we split the grant for the Nursery in two, divided between our underprivileged children and the Nursery for the Blind. Not that there was any lack of sympathy on her part for work with blind children; what she objected to was the fact that we had proceeded without previous consultation, a mistake which, of course, we never repeated. Until Miss Morrison was replaced in the Grant Foundation, following a change of Directors, the Hampstead Clinic could feel safe, the departments under her aegis flourishing and expanding.

Leaving the Grant Foundation did not mean the end of her association with our work. On the contrary, the link between us became even closer. Adele Morrison entered the Anna Freud Found