#Glasgow School of Speech Therapy

[stratharchives]

Guest blog post- Rachel E ‘Betty’ Stark: speech therapist and Himalayan mountaineer

Our Speech and Language Therapy friend, Dr Linda Armstrong, has been continuing her research and has uncovered the fascinating story of ‘Betty’ Stark, adventurous speech and language therapist 1940s-1970s.

I’ve just had the most interesting ‘journey’ finding out more about Betty Stark … while staying at home. There is information about the first fifteen or so years of her professional career in various types of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ documents held at Strathclyde University Archives and Special Collections (committee minutes, the journal and Bulletin). To find out more about Betty in recent weeks though, I’ve been to the 2002 exhibition ‘On top of the world: Scottish Mountaineers at Home and Abroad’ at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, to Scotland’s People at the National Records of Scotland, to the Himalayas and to the headquarters of the American Speech and Hearing Association in Maryland (currently in coronavirus lock-down like us) - all without opening my front door.

Her name is probably not familiar to many of today’s speech and language therapists, in comparison with some of her contemporaries. Nevertheless, Betty Stark’s contribution to the profession - and her mountaineering achievements - should be remembered and applauded.

Betty was born Rachel Elizabeth Stark and used various forms of her first names throughout her life. In the mountaineering world, she seems to have been known as Betty. In the 1940s and 50s she was known, at least professionally and in publications, as Elizabeth. By the late 1950s and on her emigration to USA, she was published as Rachel E Stark. I don’t know why her first name adapted over time, but wonder if it was tied in with her developing and changing professional identity. She maybe continued to be called Betty informally.

The Glasgow School of Speech Therapy (now part of the University of Strathclyde) is 85 years old in 2020. Betty was one of its early graduates. Its historical records are also held at the University of Strathclyde Archives and Special Collections. She studied there in the final years of the second world war and became a Licentiate of the College of Speech Therapists in early 1946. By 1950, she had acted as editor for two issues of Bulletin and in the following decade published articles in the College of Speech Therapists’ newsletter on disparate topics. For example, one from 1953 uses both audit and research to examine the effectiveness of three sessions of speech therapy per week. This built on previous work by Maud Wohl in Dunbartonshire. Today’s paediatric speech and language therapists will recognise the benefits and challenges of delivering this type of service. In 1958, an evaluation of the effectiveness of speech therapy for children with dysfluency focuses on prognostic indicators. In the same year, she shows lyrical and humorous talents in a poem called ‘A Cautionary Tale’ about how Jock Tamson (here a tape-recorder hirer!) won over a phonetician with a bag of conversational lozenges. This was published in November, not on April 1st.

Mountaineering was one of her hobbies. In 1955, Betty was part of a group of three Scottish women who climbed a then unnamed peak of 22,000 feet in the Himalayas, without oxygen and supported by porters and Sherpa guides. She spoke about this experience to speech therapists on at least two occasions. At the Scottish Area meeting in November 1955, Dr McAllister (Director of the Glasgow School) 

remarked that very early in her acquaintance with Miss Stark she had discovered these qualities of courage, enthusiasm and leadership which she had brought to bear on the expedition. (Bulletin No. 58, December 1955)

Image above copyright HarperCollins- reproduced with kind permission of archive.

Betty also gave a presentation supported by coloured slides at College’s 1957 AGM. The expedition was partly funded by Collins, who published an account of it in the book ‘Tents in the Clouds’ co-authored by Betty. When I contacted Collins (now HarperCollins) to ask permission to use the picture of Betty from it in this blog-post, I was delighted to find out that a recent intern in their archives department had chosen this book to write about in a blog last year!

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/word-lovers-blog/new/from-the-archives-the-cloak-and-dagger-expedition,556,HCB.html 

Betty’s mountaineering achievements continue to feature in exhibitions, talks and mountaineering blogs long after her death.

Betty’s award of Fellowship of the College of Speech Therapists in 1963 was for her thesis ‘The incidence and nature of stammering in educationally sub-normal children’ [now children with learning disabilities]. By that time, she had already emigrated to the USA. I’m not sure of the reason for this but within a few years she had received a Masters degree in speech pathology from Northwestern University and a doctorate from the University of Oklahoma Medical Centre, so it may have been for career development. At that time, most speech therapists in UK qualified with diplomas and none had yet graduated from a degree-level course. Her post-graduate studies would have been quite exceptional here in the mid-1960s.

I’ve only found one article by Betty in College’s professional journal. It appeared in 1978 when the journal was called the British Journal of Disorders of Communication and was about her innovative work in infant speech development. She specialised in speech and language development and disorders in children, writing many articles and editing at least one book on this fundamental aspect of speech and language therapy work.

Article image:  BJDC (1978) 13/1, 41-47.

She had a long and illustrious research and academic career in the USA, including at the John Hopkins School of Medicine and the Kennedy Institute of Baltimore. Latterly, Betty was Professor of Audiology and Speech Sciences at Purdue University from 1987 to 1991. Her name continues to be lent to a professorial post there (Rachel E Stark Distinguished Professor).

It’s been a pleasure to research her life and career. I’m hoping to learn more about the Himalayan expedition in the forthcoming exhibition ‘Petticoats and Pinnacles’ at the National Library of Scotland in October 2020. Betty Stark (1923-2000) – speech therapist and mountaineer – one of Jock Tamson’s bairns - what a woman!

#StrathSLT85 #RCSLT75 #guest blog #archives and special collections #university of strathclyde #speech therapy #speech therapists #20th century #women #mountaineering #Glasgow School of Speech Therapy #SpeechTherapy

[a-room-of-my-own]

A bit of reading : orwomen.()scot/did-you-know/?fbclid=IwAR0H7TqxQNqemZcAGFtvR_HLkbkxmZ4FY6srcgrULWxGPyWuc6QPTmDQfVI

Did you know…

…that 80-95% of people who say they are trans choose to have no medical treatment at all – no surgery, no drugs, not even therapy? Transwomen are just male people who subjectively believe that they are female. That’s it. That is all that’s required.

Despite some commentators describing an “epidemic of violence against trans people“, transwomen are no more likely to be murdered than anyone else, and the best data available shows it’s half as likely. In Scotland, zero have been killed. In fact, transwomen are almost twice as likely to be the perpetrator of a murder than to be murdered in the UK, which is not surprising since a male pattern of violence is retained regardless of any transition or cross-dressing.

The 48% of trans youth have attempted suicide statistic is nonsense too. It was based on just 27 trans people (aged 26 and under), from a self-selecting online survey – which made the data worthless. Yet that hasn’t stopped the TIE Campaign peddling similar in Scottish schools (or is it 27%, they seem confused?), contrary to Samaritans advice on avoiding attributing the cause to any one incident. The NHS Gender Identity Development Service actually says “suicide is extremely rare” and rates of self-harm, distress and suicide ideation are similar to other children seen by CAMHS.

Did you know that 1 in 50 males in prison now self-id as trans according to Ministry of Justice figures? If it is so dangerous to be trans why do so many choose to come out when in jail?

Were you aware that 95% of prisoners are men, and 5% women? That most women in prison are there for financial crime, and most men are in for violent offending. Did you know that men commit 98% of sex offences? That 48% of transwomen prisoners are sex offenders (compared to less than 20% in the general male estate) and would swamp the female estate if they all transferred.

What makes these convicted sex offenders, who were born male, women? Why should female prisoners be locked up with rapists if they say “I am a woman”? Are you willing to be in a prison cell with a male rapist on that basis? And if not, do you think other women should be? Are you aware that women have already been sexually assaulted and raped, in several countries, because of this policy?

Did you know that Scotland already has a policy significantly more liberal than England’s, stating that transgender prisoners must normally be housed according to the “social gender” with which they self-identify? And that this policy was brought in by a senior prison officer, himself now a convicted sex offender? A policy put in place without even talking to women’s groups or considering that there would be any impact on female prisoners at all. Despite warnings of abuse, including from former women’s prison governor Rhona Hotchkiss, the promised policy review has not been forthcoming.

What about women’s refuges, have you considered what it could do to a woman fleeing male violence to encounter a male in that refuge? Read why the CEO of a domestic violence charity, Karen Ingala Smith, considers it imperative that refuges remain women-only, and her speech at the Scottish Parliament.

Did you know that a woman was asked to leave a shelter because, as a rape survivor, she couldn’t sleep in the same room as a strange male, regardless of how he identified? Are you aware that a man used self-id to access a women’s shelter where he sexually assaulted vulnerable women? Are you aware that a rape relief shelter in Canada lost all public funding for insisting they remain women-only, and had a dead rat nailed to their door?

Are you aware that the Scottish Government imposes a transwomen inclusive policy on Scottish Women’s Aid as a condition of funding and that Rape Crisis Scotland refused to guarantee a female counsellor for a traumatised teenager? We know from private meetings that they erroneously believe they cannot provide a single-sex service due to a lack of ‘case law’, despite having previously done so for many years. Did you know there is a male manager of a rape crisis centre, who failed to disclose his sex at interview, and which still claims to be women-led?

Are you aware that despite less than half of changing rooms in swimming pools and sports centres being mixed sex, 90% of sexual assaults have happened in them? Yet mixed-sex, ‘gender-neutral’ facilities are constantly pushed, including in schools – contrary to law and building regulations requiring separate sex provision – when it would be more responsible to increase third space unisex provision for the comfort of those who need it.

That’s before you even get into the issue of how to keep out predatory men who aren’t trans, if you say that any man who ‘identifies as a woman’ can use communal changing/showering areas at will. A man exposing himself in a park commits a crime. A man doing so in a women’s changing room, where you’re also naked, who need not have even told staff he identifies as a woman, may no longer be committing an offence.

Did you know that the Scottish Government funded LGBT Youth Scotland, a spin-off group from Stonewall, to write guidance for schools that breaches children’s rights in at least eleven ways? This includes the unscientific belief in gender identity, which even the Justice Minister is at a loss to define, the promotion of harmful breast binding and the removal of all single-sex spaces and sports. No-one should be surprised at this as Stonewall have long campaigned for the removal of women’s rights, although single issue political pressure groups should have been no-where near schoolchildren.

It took the Government until June 2019 to commit to replacing this guidance, having privately received advice that it was “not legal“. Yet, this new legally compliant guidance is seven months overdue and the Education Minister is refusing to withdraw LGBTYS’s guidance in the interim.

Why should we accept smear tests from any male who feels they have a womanly gender identity – what does that even mean (let’s ask the Justice Minister again)? And yes, it is happening. A rape survivor who wanted a woman to carry out her breast screening found her letter used as an example in hospital trans guidance as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘highly discriminatory’. And a woman in a psychiatric ward who was terrified at being locked in a ward with an “extremely male-bodied” fellow patient was regarded as a transphobic bigot. The truth is that women in mixed-sex hospital wards, particularly psych, have very real reasons to fear men.

Did you know that 35 clinicians have resigned from the Tavistock (children’s gender clinic in London) over their failings, including the Governor? Who later wrote a damning account of the abject failure to heed evidence that their affirmation-only policy is harmful to children, especially to the huge influx in girls who may suffer other complex problems, such as trauma, autism, a history of sexual abuse or discomfort with their developing sexuality. A staggering 48% of children referred to Tavistock have ASD traits, and a BBC Newsnight investigation revealed significant numbers of children seeking transition treatment based on their family’s homophobia.

Are you aware that studies show that puberty blockers result in 100% of children progressing to cross-sex hormones – whereas, if left unmedicated, the Tavistocks’s own research shows over 90%, if supported by counselling, are happy with their sex once they emerge from puberty. Did you know hormone blockers may cause sterility, a large decrease in IQ, bone density loss, and more? An investigation by the Health Review Authority concluded that blockers are really the start of irreversible physical transition and recommended that “Researchers and clinical staff should…avoid referring to puberty suppression as providing a ‘breathing space’, to avoid risk of misunderstanding.” This led to a major overhaul of the NHS UK website which no longer considers blockers to be fully reversible and confirms long-term effects are unknown.

The young person’s gender clinic at Sandyford, Glasgow has recently withdrawn their information booklet and we trust it will be similarly updated. Do you think all the government funded trans organisations will be scrupulous in updating their information too – including LGBT Youth guidance in Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Trans/NHS guidance, and Stonewall advice, among many more, including of course the already deemed “not legal” school guidance by LGBT Youth?

Are you aware that the number of children referred to Sandyford is rising at a faster rate than the rest of the UK? Yet they don’t actually know how many girls have been referred as children can select what sex they want recorded on medical records – although unofficially, clinicians report similar concerns as elsewhere about the huge proportional rise in young girls seeking to transition. Did you know that bias, and not evidence, dominates the WPATH transgender standard of care followed in Scotland? And it is woefully out-of-date considering the fundamental change in patient make up since it was written in 2011.

Read the speech given by Dr David Bell at the Scottish Parliament and consider why, if his report about issues at the Tavistock prompted the Director to resign, was it not enough for the Health Minister, Jeane Freeman, to instigate an enquiry into identical practices at Sandyford? Perhaps the Government will listen to the outcome of a Judicial Review that is being sought by Keira Bell, a detransitioning woman, who wants to protect other troubled young girls from similar treatment.

Are you aware that women with our views are threatened with violence, rape and death, almost as an everyday occurrence? We are told TERF is not a slur, but I challenge you to find any instances of it being used without abuse or threats attached to it. Do you think it’s in any way acceptable for lesbians to be on the receiving end of these menaces for asserting, or even just trying to be proud of, their right to be same-sex attracted? Do you really think there’s such a thing as a lesbian with a penis?

All that hate is from transactivists, and is aimed at women with our views. I challenge you to find anything remotely equivalent from here, from our recorded talks, or indeed anywhere else. This is NOT a case of two sides as bad as each other. And it’s notable that the hate is not aimed at genuinely transphobic, aggressive men. It’s aimed at women. It’s aimed at us.

And JK Rowling. Read the tweets she posted and look at the replies. Read the essay further explaining her thoughts and ask how anyone could possibly think she deserved such atrocious abuse, or how transactivists thought it in any way acceptable to post penis images in retaliation (don’t worry, it’s been edited!) on a child’s thread about Ickabog art.

Did you know women can be, and often are, fired for believing sex is real, that humans cannot change sex, and women and girls are entitled to privacy when undressing or otherwise vulnerable? And yet poll, after poll, after poll, after poll show that this is the majority view, by at least 80%. You may well wonder why then, is the Scottish Government proposing to bring in Hate Crime legislation that would see even JK Rowling imprisoned for up to seven years for expressing views deemed abusive by transactivists, yet affords women no such protection in law, based on their sex.

Innate gender identity is a belief system. There’s no evidence one exists. If our Government cannot even define it, then it should not be presented as fact to our children. It should not over-ride women’s hard fought for rights.

Do you know that the very word ‘woman’ will change definition, if the trans lobby succeed? If we can’t define what a woman is, how can we accurately capture data? How can we record male violence, the pay gap, our representation in government, business, finance, law, media…anywhere? Police Scotland already record incidences on the basis of gender identity, but can’t seem to recall when, or why that happened, and the census looks to be going the same way, despite the importance of recognising sex being shown quite dramatically by COVID-19.

An influential lobby loudly insisting that they won’t be erased (when trans organisations are heavily state funded and train all major businesses, branches of government, school teachers, universities and NHS boards) are actively campaigning to erase the very definition of what a woman is – best archive it, just in case! Have you noticed how easy it is to define a woman when we’re being aborted, subjected to FGM, married off, denied the vote, raped, murdered, paid less, represented less in every single sector of government and industry, expected to perform most of the world’s unpaid labour, and constituting 71% of the world’s modern slaves? The only places that seem unsure on what a woman is are the places feminism was starting to make inroads. It’s almost like there must be some sort of a connection, isn’t it?

We don’t have any fear, resentment or hatred for trans people. We agree there should be protection in law against discrimination and violence. We just don’t agree that our rights need to be railroaded over in the process. We don’t agree that male people should access women’s spaces, or benefit from women’s provision, at will, without our consent. Our name is WOMEN and our rights matter.

Don’t you agree…?

#gender critical #For women Scotland #Transgender

[pediatricianpro-blog]

6 Awesome Tips for Your First OT Job

There is still a lot to learn after only working your first OT job for a month, but cheers to utilizing these tips and continuing to grow professionally and clinically along the way!Find Original Blog Here!After one month in to the game, the nerves of your first OT job will settle. There’s a lot to be nervous about when starting your first job but give yourself credit because you know a lot!

The studying isn’t over. Not even close You have spent hours studying the Glasgow Coma Scale and you have memorized all the pediatric reflexes (though your heart is sent on geriatrics). You may have even used some NBCOT guides to get you there. Finally, you pass!

Then you’ll go to work the next day feeling like a million bucks until you silently and nervously laugh when you look at the new admit’s medical history/chart. It might as well be a foreign language. And you have no idea what their rehab potential could be. So, don't be shy of Google or a dusty textbook, and keep reading to my second and third points.

Nonmaleficence Do No Harm. Quite simply if your gut feels funny, you should probably reevaluate your next choice. Whether it's stepping out briefly to check if a patient is on NPO status. Or maybe grade an activity down until you feel confident enough that your patient won't pass out while you readjust the O2!

You learn to ask questions during your Fieldwork, but let’s be real you will have days where you feel like a lost puppy even as a registered therapist. However, as long as you place your patient’s safety first, and actively seek mentorship, your future will shine brightly.

Senior therapists are your friends And nurses. And social workers. And physicians. They want to see you succeed! (And so do other disciplines depending on your area of practice).

Well, most of them anyways...

The best part of any job is having other occupational therapists around so that you can humor them with your many questions a day.

The same holds true with the physical therapists and speech therapists. They are the "phone a friend" aspect of Who Wants to be a Millionaire for your first OT job. Only more reliable. Just remember. It’s an asset to be a new grad! Frankly, when you think about it, new grads have the most up to date research brewing in our brains.

Your patients will question your credibility This can occur in two primary scenarios.

Exhibit A: You've been working as a baby OT for over a month now and a handful patients and family members will ask you, "have you graduated from high school"?

Be kind. Be happy. Be grateful that in five years they might ask if you have graduated college yet!

Exhibit B: The physician writes a referral for occupational therapy. Except all it says is, "eval and treat". And it certainly doesn't explain to the patient all the awesome stuff we can do to help improve their functional independence!

Don’t be alarmed when a patient tells you he is not interested in getting help finding a job. Just be ready to have a stellar, client-centered answer in an effort to inform/educate your patient on what skilled OT services can offer him.

You feel what your patients feel If your patients are sad, you’ll find yourself feeling down; nonetheless, build rapport and help them find the silver lining no matter their situation. Remind them to give grace to you as their therapist, but also to themselves on their journey. Encourage them to be their own advocate.

You must put your own self-care first Taking consistent action to refill your energy, motivation, and purpose requires you to take responsibility for your personal mental and physical wellbeing. Life is a balance. And if you are lucky enough to get through OT school, you of all people must model and seek occupational balance.

This could be a post in itself, but to put it briefly ensure your wellbeing through tackling some of these activities:

Define your purpose

Create a list of STGs and a few LTGs (psi no need to write your personal goals in RUMBA or COAST format)

Take time for personal growth and development

Learn to say one word (Hint: opposite of yes)

Exercise (Our job involves a pretty strong physical component whether you’re engaging in floor play or Max A transfers. Get those gains in!)

Eat better and more consistently. After all, we are the masterminds behind the IADL task of meal prep/cleanup, right?!

Sleep. This is one of our seven areas of occupation listed in our dear Practice Framework so let's all hold each other accountable.

Kill them with kindness ☺. Got a noncompliant patient, that’s okay! Smile and choose to revisit that patient later that day. Be empathetic and move on.

There is still a lot to learn after only working your first OT job for a month, but cheers to utilizing these tips and continuing to grow professionally and clinically along the way!

Find Original Blog Here!

[devils-gatemedia]

Walking onto the platform at Bridge Street had me more excited than I had felt in the past year, not just because it was my first gig in a while, but because I was finally getting to see the mighty Papa Roach! One of Nu-metal’s finest, Papa Roach were also one of the first angsty bands I started listening to when I was a young teen – it actually astounds me that I had never seen them live until this point.

There was however one disappointment. Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes were meant to be the support band for this tour, but sadly due to Frank’s mental health issues, they had to pull out. Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are becoming one of those bands that I seem to always miss! Filling the void were Ho99o9, an experimental hip-hop trio – which I found an odd mix for this show.

Papa Roach kicked off their set extremely energetically, and just as you’d expect, two mosh pits opened up as soon as the intro of ‘Break The Fall’ and ‘Crooked Teeth’’ played. Quickly following with ‘Getting Away With Murder’, the O2 erupted. The stage set was very slick, with their new logo multiplied horizontally, with rear spotlights silhouetting the band members.

The crowd were pumped for this show, the energy levels were so high. Jacoby mentioned half way through the set that they had a film crew recording their shows for a live music video on this tour. The Glasgow crowd took this news to heart and really got involved. Mid-set, Papa Roach played ‘Born For Greatness’, ‘She Loves Me Not’ and ‘Scars’ back to back, probably three of my favourite songs ever. ‘She Loves Me Not’ and ‘Scars’ followed. It almost felt like some sort of therapy, releasing all those dormant teen angsts!

A beautifully constructed instrumental section toned things down before playing ‘Gravity’ and ‘Periscope’.  Phone lights and lighters filled the air adding to the atmosphere… before the band broke into a miniature cover of Blur’s ‘Song 2’!

It didn’t take long for Papa Roach to get the mood back up, with Jacoby getting the crowd down on their knees to jump up and go mental, sending the energy levels back through the roof! Another cover, this time Linkin Park’s ‘In The End’, as a tribute to their good friend Chester Bennington, after his untimely death in July. “Push your head up and do yourself a favour”, said Jacoby, during a short speech about not dealing with mental health issues in solitude. Papa Roach then pushed forward into ‘American Dreams’, following with the lead track from new album ‘Crooked Teeth’, ‘Help’. It seemed a lot of the crowd were old school original fans there for the classics, as the response felt a little subdued, which is a shame. It’s a belter of a track!

For the encore, Jacoby rocked back onto the stage wearing a Scotland football jersey, playing ‘Blood Brothers’, on which Scott Kennedy (from Glasgow’s Bleed From Within) helped out on tonight. The place was a riot! Scott’s vocals sounding as gnarly as ever! Naturally, they finished with their biggest smashes,  ‘Last Resort’ and ‘To Be Loved…’, both of which saw me crowd surfing and moshing!

The ten year wait to finally see Papa Roach live in the flesh was well worth it! If you’re thinking of catching them on this tour, I highly recommend you do! Absolutely outstanding showmanship and performance, and a whopping 21 song setlist! 10/10!

  Review: Carol Black

Images: Dave Jamieson

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Live Review: Papa Roach – O2 Academy, Glasgow Walking onto the platform at Bridge Street had me more excited than I had felt in the past year, not just because it was my first gig in a while, but because I was finally getting to see the mighty Papa Roach!

[stratharchives]

Now available: The records of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

Hot off the press: our latest collection description to be made available on our online catalogue is that of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists! This comes just in time for the 75th anniversary of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists this year! This year also sees the 85th anniversary of the teaching of Speech and Language Therapy at the University.

You can find the catalogue at this web address: https://atom.lib.strath.ac.uk/royal-college-of-speech-and-language-therapists-records

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) is the UK speech and language therapists’ professional body that provides leadership and sets and maintains standards for the education, clinical practice, and ethical conduct of UK Speech and Language Therapists. The body was established in 1945 when the Association of Speech Therapists and the British Society of Speech Therapists joined forces.

The history of the profession is a fascinating one with diverse roots including the dramatic arts as well as the rehabilitation of soldiers suffering from head wounds and ‘shell-shock’ following WWI. The collection, donated to the University of Strathclyde Archives and Special Collections by the College in 2017, is a great record of the beginnings of the organisation and its development. Minute books date to as far back as 1942, charting the formation of the College, and continue right up to 2002 recording the key directions and decisions of the college through the decades.

Another set of interesting records are copies of examination papers for the Diploma of Licentiateship from 1948-1988, showing us the questions candidates were examined upon. An extensive run of the organisation’s journal can also be found within the collection, starting at the first ‘Journal of the British Society of Speech Therapists’ in 1935 and spanning up to the ‘Journal of the College of Speech Therapists’, 1981 editions. This provides brilliant evidence of over five decades of research in the field and represents a large volume of speech and language therapy discoveries.

The collection is of further significance to Strathclyde as a founder member of the College, and its first President, Dr Anne McAllister can be said to have kick started the Speech and Language Therapy Profession in Glasgow, and indeed Scotland. After Dr McAllister graduated MA from the University of Glasgow in 1917, she trained as a teacher at Stow College and was appointed lecturer in Phonetics there in 1919, and subsequently at the teacher training college at Jordanhill. She and a colleague set up the first University Speech clinic in Scotland in 1927 and the case load grew so rapidly that she started courses for the training of speech therapists in Glasgow. She established the Glasgow School of Speech Therapy in 1935 and was Director until 1964. After Jordanhill merged with the University of Strathclyde in 1993, The Glasgow School of Speech Therapy eventually became the Speech and Language Therapy course at the University.

Researchers are welcome to browse the catalogue and come and access the collection in our reading room. Please e-mail: [email protected] and we look forward to booking you in. Information on how to access our collections can be found here: http://guides.lib.strath.ac.uk/archives/access

(Header image: RCSLT/11/2; Journal: RCSLT/8/1/ 2/1; Anne McAllister: JCE/14/19/1/ 4)

#StrathSLT85 #RCSLT75 #speech therapy #speech therapists #college of speech therapists #university of strathclyde #archives and special collections #20th century #archive cataloguing #archives #SpeechTherapy

[stratharchives]

Guest blog- Who were the first Fellows of the College of Speech Therapists?

This may seem like a simple question but there have been many different lists of their names over the decades. Dr Linda Armstrong and Professor Jois Stansfield think they may have the definitive answer.

Towards the end of the second world war, the amalgamation of the British Society of Speech Therapists (BSST) and the Association of Speech Therapists (AST) produced the College of Speech Therapists. This unification had been under discussion before the outbreak of war. The Board of Registration of Medical Auxiliaries (BRMA) forced the issue in 1942. It would only deal with one qualifying body for any profession and had opted in speech therapy’s case for BSST, thereby excluding the other organisation’s members from its register.

Linda searched unsuccessfully for a list of CST’s Founder Fellows (FF) in various minutes and other documents from the time (now held in Strathclyde University’s Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ (RCSLT) historical paper collection):

Speech (BSST’s journal), including reports from BSST AGMs and lists of its Members and Associates

Speech Therapists’ Interim Committee minutes

minutes of the Remedial Section of the Association of Teachers of Speech and Drama (AST from 1943)

AST annual report

CST Provisional Council, Council and Executive minutes

First CST AGM 6.1.45 (the formal inauguration event of the unified professional body).

Other potential written sources from the time, which aren’t in the RCSLT collection include BSST’s Council/Executive minutes, BSST’s monthly Bulletin, AST membership lists and Joint Council minutes.

Linda had great hope that CST’s original Memorandum and Articles of Association would reveal which of the members signed them (and they would be the FF). However, that document isn’t in the Strathclyde collection. Fingers were crossed that the Company Secretary has a copy and that it could be accessed once RCSLT HQ staff return to work after Covid lockdown. Minutes of CST Council from 14 September 1973 revealed a blow to this prospect. An accompanying paper notes that the FF names aren’t listed in the first Articles. Thwarted!

The lists of CST’s FF compiled over the decades didn’t help either, eg those in Bulletin in 1959 and 1974, letters from eminent members in the 1970s, the Annual Report 1990-91, the 1995 RCSLT History and the last published and available RCSLT Directory of 2004. These mostly contain different numbers, some different names and occasionally differentiate Founder Fellows from Fellows Enrolled on Foundation. They repeatedly offer eighteen though as the number of FF. CST’s 1943-44 Provisional Council minutes however show that it consisted of only eight members:

Eileen MacLeod, Beryl Oldrey (Hammond) and Winifred Kingdon Ward from BBST

Silvia Pick (Hudson-Smith), Honor Baines (Boome) and Joan van Thal from AST

the secretaries Amy Swallow and Elizabeth Wood respectively.

The only contemporary written evidence Linda found in the RCSLT collection to confirm who were the FF is from the two sets of minutes of the Remedial Section of the Association of Teachers of Speech and Drama (reconstituted as AST later in 1943 – but that’s another story). They elected six members to be their CST FF in mid-1943.

[Extracts of Remedial Sub-committee minutes. Ref: RCSLT/1/1.]

Linda collated information from 14 different contemporary and more modern sources (up to 1995) and plotted all the names which were identified at least once. This produced 35 names, five of whom we know definitely weren’t FF.

Meanwhile, Jois searched the National Registers of Medical Auxiliary Services – Speech Therapy, published annually by the Board of Registration of Medical Auxiliaries under the auspices of the British Medical Association (BMA). In the 1944 edition speech therapists are designated as FCST or LCST for the first time, i.e. Fellow or Licentiate of the College of Speech Therapists. 27 FCSTs are listed - according very well with Linda’s list of 30 possible FFs from RCSLT sources.

[ Image reproduced courtesy of: British Medical Association. Citation: The National Register of Medical Auxiliary Services. Speech Therapists (NRMAS-ST). 3rd edition (London: BMA, 1944).]

The register confirmed that two of Linda’s list of 30 weren’t FF.  That just left the question of Dr Boome, elected FF in 1943. He was a medical doctor and so wouldn’t have appeared as a speech therapist registered with BRMA. He must have been given an award by CST as he led, championed and supported speech therapists so much at the time (he even married one!) and wasn’t one of the doctors awarded Honorary FCST in CST’s early days. His obituary in CST’s journal is clear that he was a FF.

Our current best guess then is that there were 28 FF (named below) – the 27 practising speech therapists listed in the 1944 register as FCST plus Dr Boome. It’s ironic that this list was derived from a BMA document, not from a CST one!

 CST’s Founder Fellows

BSST      Margaret Elizabeth Badcock (married name - Eldridge).

AST        Honor Mary Stanhope Baines (Boome)

AST        Dr Edward James Boome

BSST      Ethel Edna Brewitt

AST        Joan Dakin

AST        Aileen Annesley Dance 

BSST      Ethel Mary Dolman

BSST      Muriel Walton Ferrie

BSST      Dorothy Marion Fleming

AST        Daisy Gwynneth Harries

BSST      Winifred Kingdon Ward

AST        Ida Margaret Shadforth Knight

AST        Grace Elizabeth Lloyd

BSST      Lionel Logue

BSST      Eileen C MacLeod

BSST      Anne Hutcheson McAllister (who founded the Glasgow School of Speech Therapy)

BSST      Muriel Mary Morley

BSST      Beryl Oldrey (Hammond)

BSST      Mabel Victoria Oswald

AST        Silvia Phyllis Pick (Hudson-Smith)

AST        Dorothy Mary Roe (MacDonald-Heffernan)

AST        Hester Rosser

AST        Dr Leopold Stein

BSST      Amy Swallow

BSST      Arthur Percy Tolfree

AST        Joan van Thal

AST        Joyce Lucy Wilkins

BSST      Doris Wilson

Those in bold above sat on the first CST Council – ‘the 18’?

A more detailed and referenced version of this blog-post will be available online via the Strathclyde University Archives and Special Collections catalogue in the near future, so stay tuned!

#StrathSLT85 #RCSLT75 #Speech Therapy #speech therapists #guest blog #archives and special collections #university of strathclyde #20th Century #archives #College of Speech Therapists