Old Friends
You may remember that, back in April, I sent you the sad news that my step mum, Eva Sessions (the daughter-in-law of Friends House architect Hubert Lidbetter), had died aged 106. I wondered whether readers might know if any Quakers had lived longer.
Well, our Friend Barbara Windle has found one. Barbara has been doing some work on Elizabeth Fry and her associates: ‘How many longer-lived ones there have been I know not, but, when looking up Elizabeth Hanbury tonight, the first thing I read in Wikipedia was: “Elizabeth Hanbury (9 June 1793 – 31 October 1901) was a British philanthropist who worked with Elizabeth Fry. She is thought to have been Queen Victoria’s ‘oldest subject’; she died in 1901, aged 108 years and 144 days.” She and her sister Mary were Quakers and they visited prisons with the famous reformer Elizabeth Fry, including prisoners who were bound for transportation.’
I wonder if readers of the Friend know of any Quaker who lived longer? Being alive in three different centuries must take some beating.
Michael Sessions
Young Friends
I can assure the anonymous author of ‘Children in Meeting’ (22 August) that it’s not at all inappropriate to allow children to stay in main Meeting for a whole hour. Our Meeting has at times been enriched by the gurglings of babies, and, if a teenager prefers to remain in main Meeting instead of joining the younger ones in our children’s Meeting, that’s fine with us too. I also recall a Meeting for Worship in Germany when we had two toddlers and no spare room. The two children sat on the floor in the middle and, throughout the hour, peacefully played with each other, occasionally quietly babbling away. There was nothing irritating about the noises they made. Irritating were only the regular ‘ssshhh’ sounds from the parents.
The article notes that the Meeting in question offers a monthly all-age Meeting for Worship. Providing a welcome to families in this way on twelve Sundays a year is a laudable start. It’s more than most other Meetings do in this respect (what a sad thing to have to say). But it still leaves a want of welcome during the other forty Sundays of the year.
Local Meetings don’t need to feel daunted about being prepared for families with children. Staff members of Quakers in Britain have developed a range of ideas and resources to get you started, such as the simple idea of a welcome box. See https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/the-welcome-box.
Klaus Huber
