Interview with Dr Lin Berwick MBE

 

For details of the Lin Berwick Trust, go to http://www.thelinberwicktrust.org.uk/

 

Born 18 March 1950, London

 

Educated school for physical handicapped at Bromley Hall; Dorton House School for the Blind, Sevenoaks, Kent; Hethersett RNIB Vocational Training Centre; RNIB Commercial Training College, London; Westminster Pastoral Foundation, London, Methodist Mission; British Institute of Homeopathy, London; University of East Anglia.

 

Born on 18 March 1950 as St. Andrews Hospital Bow London. Three months premature weighing two pounds. Thought to be stillborn. Cerebral palsy and partial sight. 13 Alton Street, Poplar, Tower Hamlets. Grandmother's house with outside toilet and backyard. Weak lungs and pneumonia. At 18 months, neurologist at Carshalton labelled Lin as a spastic. Two brothers. Lin screamed unless carried. Nancie Finnie, physiotherapist. Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hackney. Bobath Centre at Marylebone Road, then Hampstead. Father carpenter; mother machinist who specialised in children's nightclothes. New council house at Grundy Street, Poplar. Bought a car and caravan and went to Whitstable for weekends. Learnt to sit up at three, speak at four and crawl at five. Crawled everywhere and wore out shoes every three weeks. No support from family. Attitude of other parents. Using a tricycle. Going to a school for physical handicapped at Bromley Hall. Great-grandmother had attended the same school 100 years before. Using expensive Keeler Aids. Typical day at school. Horseriding. Hymn singing, needlework, English, Scripture. Art.

 

Lin regarded as ‘posh’. Description of school building. Bullying when Lin became blind. Alfreda Elderfield, teacher. Learning glockenspiel. Lin's faith. Braille and basket weaving. Benefits of Bobath treatment. Cost of physio. Effect on parents’ relationship. Mother making shirts. Father making parallel bars, pedals and staircase.

 

 

Hamstring operation in 1962 at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Hackney Road. Spent 12th birthday in hospital. Pain. Plaster to thigh in six months. First four steps. Breakdown, loss of weight, tranquillisers. Dead tissue caused by operation not discovered until 1978. Trauma of being in hospital for 11 weeks and four days. Seven months of school. At 16, Lin had the mental age of nine.

Download transcript of tape 2

 

At age 14, (in 1964) Lin visited Moorfields for a regular check-up. Increasing visual perception problems. Difficulty with school work. Severe damage to retina. Told by a doctor: “Well, you’ll be blind within three months, so you might as well get used to it.” Other pupils put chairs and closed doors in Lin’s path. Learning Braille and registering as blind. Learnt to walk at 13 (following operation) but by 15 was totally blind. Mother and father’s reaction to her blindness. Mother blindfolded father, to demonstrate to him the difficulty of eating by visualising the plate as a clock. Lin had school tutor (teacher for the blind), which caused other pupils to regard her as “teacher’s pet”. Prospect of entry to a school for visually impaired children, Linden Lodge, Wimbledon, as a day boarder. Didn’t discover until September that headmistress regarded Lin as having left school in July, and had not offered a place because of Lin’s physical disability. Mother contacted local MP and battled with Education Department. Interview for Dorton House School for the Blind, Seal, Sevenoaks, Kent, 60 miles from Lin’s home. Residential boarder from Sunday to Friday. Feelings of trepidation.

 

 

 

Dorton House head, Mr Bolton; Miss Joan Brown, Deputy Head. Head offered Lin, the first physically disabled student, a 6-week trial in October 1966. Light and dark perception. Walking on two tripod sticks. Interview for Dorton House. Atmosphere of laughter and music-making. Sunday 16 October 1965. Bedrooms were 40 stairs up, taking 20 minutes to ascend the staircase. Down and up stairs three times a day. Dormitory of ten. Teachers stopped bullying. Learning the flute in 1964 with a group for disabled young people, the Wingfield Music Trust. First-ever exam: Grade 3 flute with the Royal Academy of Music. Adjusting to being blind in a specialist educational setting. Reading Braille at 16 words a minute. GCE ‘O’ levels in English Language, English Literature and Religious Knowledge. Left school in July 1968. Went to Hethersett RNIB Vocational Training Centre. Domestic science room not accessible, but took to telephony. Applied to RNIB Commercial Training College, Pembridge Place, London, to learn telephony. Despite tutor’s opposition, Lin passed with distinction. Memorising dialling codes. Less support because of dual disability. Mother helped Lin to access college. Interview in City of London at Commonwealth Trading Bank of Australia. Shorthand Braille note taker.

 

 

Bank worried about physical access, including steps and swing doors. Lin offered to work for a month with no salary. Bank had to alter switchboard to make it accessible. Lin learned all staff extension numbers, prior to starting on 17 August 1970. Bank offered her job after three days. She stayed until 1983, trained 60 switchboard operators and answered 1.5 million calls. Earned £16 a week in 1970.

 

 

 

Blindness caused disorientation in public places. Manager Mr Chandler offered Lin’s mother work in bank’s post department. Father became a bank messenger in the City, enabling him to transport Lin and her mother from Tower Hamlets; later Hornchurch in Essex. Up at 5.15am. With parents always around, Lin had limited time to make friends. Lin’s mother held back from promotion. Difficulty as a disabled person to get a cheap loan for council house purchase. Mr Chandler made a personal loan of £500. Owning own home was a special moment for family. Father involved with East London Spastic Society. Lin formed East London Spastic and Handicapped Society for older people. Raised funds for accessible transport for the club, assisted by Capital Radio. Organised volunteer drivers for outings and holidays. In 1976 Lin fell and hit head on marble floor at work – rushed to Moorfields to have eye removed. Pain and trauma. Drug reaction. Went back to bank after four weeks, fitted with artificial eye. East London Spastic and Handicapped Society became Disabled Fellowship Club of East London, removing word ‘handicapped’.

 

Autobiography, ‘Undefeated’. Lin became a PR Officer for a tape recording society for house-bound. Pain of eye removal. Broadcast on 'Radio Moorfields', two hours on Saturday mornings called ‘Lin Berwick Mix’.

Music and interviews with famous people at the BBC e.g. Desmond Wilcox, James Galway, Googie Withers. Great friends with presenter Sue MacGregor. Lin chosen for Eamonn Andrews’s This Is Your Life in front of a worldwide audience of 30 million. 250 guests at party afterwards. The recording, played today, shows how disability language has changed.

 

 

 

Meeting famous people. Community care. In the 1970s disabled people were finding their voice. Lin became frustrated with militant disabled groups. 1976 –took evening course in counselling. 1978 – one year off without pay from the bank to study Analytical Psychology. Recorded lectures and converted into Braille in the evenings. Passed exams with flying colours. Was refused own cases. Devastated – three years training for nothing. Director wouldn’t change his mind in spite of saying her interviews were the best he had ever seen. Discrimination. Deputy Director disagreed with the decision. Lin applied to the Guild of Psychotherapy. Two interviews – rejected again because of disability. After the pain of a bilateral lumbar sympathectomy, Lin was critically ill for 11 days. Near-death experience altered life forever. When Lin was recovering, John, a boyfriend (aspirant Church of England clergyman), ended their relationship. Illness would take too much of his time. Lin switched to Methodist Church. Convinced she had to preach.

 

Advised to think for one month about preaching. Second eye removed. Preaching in church difficult because of access. Prejudice. 1981-88: passed exams in Old Testament, New Testament, worship, preaching techniques, Christian doctrine. Before adapted computers, someone read and recorded books. She put answers on tape and then someone typed them out. 1988: fully accredited Methodist preacher. Guest preaching. Wrote her sermons in Braille and had Braille Bible (46 volumes in three Post Office sacks) provided by Wesleyan church. Preached about bereavement, disability and sexuality. Enjoyed meeting people after service. One person had a grandson with cerebral palsy. After listening to Lin preach, they said they would never be ashamed again. Lin’s mother retired from bank at 60 and made financial arrangements with the bank that Lin should have a pension for life. She was then 33 and forced to leave the bank. June 1985: Ralph came for counselling six months after his wife had died of cancer. He wasn’t coping. He began to drive her to her charity work. Relationship developed. Lin’s mother was against their relationship, but tolerated Ralph, who asked Lin’s mother to help him understand Lin’s disabilities. She didn’t, emotionally disturbed over relationship. Ralph saw Lin without her artificial eyes. He said it didn’t matter – loved her just the same. Marriage. Honeymoon in York. Ralph never saw her as a disabled person, but as someone who needed help. They went to Israel, France, Scotland by plane. She studied to become a homeopath. First diploma after two years. Celebrated with flight on Concorde with champagne lunch.

 

 

 

Lin’s book about the Christian perspective of her life called ‘Inner Vision’ published 1990. Her message: keep faith through adversity. Incident on a plane caused acute pain and changed her life. Access in hotels. In August 1989, Lin set up The Lin Berwick Trust to raise money for a purpose-built holiday home. Denis Duncan became Vice President of the Trust. In 1997, Lin Berwick Trust’s first fully-accessible holiday home at East Harling, Norfolk, which is fully booked during summer. Lin raises money by giving talks. Second cottage, costing £500,000, is being built in North Berwick in 2006. Proud of her achievements: 2002 honorary doctorate in Civil Law at University of East Anglia and nominee for Woman of the Year. 2003 Birthday Honours list: MBE for services to disability. Wonderful day at Palace. Transcribes books and leaflets into Braille with the aid of a computer. Thinking about third cottage. Attitudes to disability are changing slowly; less prejudice. Devastated when Ralph diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2002. He has two artificial knees. Care in the Community isn’t working - cost of private care is exorbitant and many care establishments are closing down. Lin believes that Scope must realise that middle-aged and older people with disabilities are struggling and help is required.

 

Lin believes that Scope hasn’t adjusted to the demographic change of more people in older years with cerebral palsy. She has had no support from Scope and feels that Scope wants people with cerebral palsy to be vehicles for fundraising, in particular children. Scope as a major charity and a business has lost focus. Its current aim of being the largest employer of disabled people is right. A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Lack of support after age 16. Lin’s message: be proud of yourself and remember you have rights. Feels she is a spokesperson, incredibly lucky to have normal speech. Greatest achievement marrying Ralph. Labelled "educationally sub-normal" at age 5. DVD edition of ITV documentary: ‘Lin and Ralph, a love story’. Telephone counselling for ‘Disability Now’, homeopathy, and transcription. Her obituary should say immobility was a special gift, giving her time to stop and share the pain, grief and successes of others.

Download transcript of tape 7