Betty Jerman

Betty Jerman, journalist and author, instigator and campaigner, has died after a short illness from cancer. She worked on the Manchester Guardian in Fleet Street 1948-56 as a fashion and interior design writer, and subsequently was a Guardian freelance contributor into her eighties, singlehandedly writing the children's holiday events page "What's On" and supporting several society-changing movements, including the National Women's Register.

She was born in Harlesdon, London on June 26 1922. By the age of 14 she had moved home thirteen times through her mother's property deals which included confectionery and tobacconist shops manned by her printer father who was unemployed in the thirties' slump. Her formal education was chequered, since her very many London schools were constantly changing.

During the war, from 1939-41 she worked in the Peterborough office of the network of Buffer Depots, wartime emergency stores, whilst living with her father's family, with a break at the Middlesex Hospital, for the removal of a Dermoid cyst from her lower back; she had been carrying her own unborn twin up till then.

Then she joined the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office in London, latterly editing a several times a day internal news sheet covering enemy news and propaganda. Post war she moved to the German Section of the Foreign Office and provided the Secretary of State with a daily summary of media comment and reaction.

The Manchester Guardian had no woman's page post war but at the Fleet Street office she was asked to produce a female interest piece to accompany the weekly article by pre war cookery writer Ambrose Heath. Gradually there was more space as the fashion and beauty industry came out of wartime austerity.

She wrote about fashion, attending the twice yearly couture shows of Hartnell and Amies but also about the new fashions, new techniques, new domestic equipment that were reaching the high street and the much needed export markets, an interest in fashion and clothes that never left her. Later she reported on the royal gowns for the Coronation, which she reported from among thousands of children on the Embankment and attended Palace garden parties, because, she said, "I had a hat".

She married the Scotsman journalist Leslie Jerman in 1954 and they had three children, Seth. Stacey and Toby. In 1969, the family bought a second home in Norfolk and the vagaries of second home owning produced a large vegetable crop, as Leslie was a very keen gardener. Never a keen cook, Betty learned to produce up to 12 dishes of different vegetables for Sunday lunch.

In 1960 she sparked the correspondence that would lead to the formation of the National Women's Register (NWR) by writing an article for The Guardian Woman's page for the legendary women's editor Mary Stott, on how boredom affected young mothers' creativity and opportunities for making friends. Under the title "Squeezed in like sardines in Suburbia" Betty wrote suburbia was "an incredibly dull place to live and I blame the women. Their work kept them alert. Home and child-minding can have a blunting effect on a woman's mind, but only she can sharpen it."

Maureen Nicol, one such housewife, wrote a letter to the editor in response saying: "Since having my first baby I have been constantly surprised how women seem to go into voluntary exile in the home once they leave their outside work… Perhaps housebound wives with liberal interests and a desire to remain individuals could form a national register so that whenever one moves, one could contact like-minded friends."

Maureen was inundated with replies to her letter and the Housebound Housewives Register, as it was first called, began. The name was soon changed to National Housewives' Register, and in 1987 to National Women's Register, the theme, where like-minded women could meet for companionship and mental stimulation, a constant.

When NWR was granted charitable status in 1980, Betty was appointed one of the three trustees - a position she held for nineteen years.. She was also the author of 'The Lively-Minded Women', which charts the history of the first 20 years of the NWR. NWR celebrates 50 years this year, an anniversary of which Betty was justly proud to be associated with.

She was personally involved in or publicised in The Guardian or relevant magazines the new, mostly women led, organisations that changed society. These included pre-school playgrounds, the Association for the Advancement of State Education, the National Association for Children in Hospital, Toy Libraries, and the Childminders' Association. The Duke of Edinburgh wrote the foreword for her book "Do Something", a guide to self-help organisations.

Drawn into involvement in the campaign for safe play space for children she pioneered the now huge media listing of leisure activities for families, writing a thrice yearly major feature "What's On" on school holiday events for the Guardian for 27 years. The Pan paperback she wrote "Kids' Britain" came from that knowledge.

In 1971 she wrote a series of articles for The Guardian on the case of Pauline Jones, who was sentenced to 3 years in Holloway prison for the abduction of baby Denise Weller in Harlow, Essex. The abduction occurred after Jones had nursed her dying mother, miscarried her own baby and her lover had deserted her. Betty became a conduit between the media and the Jones family. Her articles prompted a 'Free Pauline Jones' campaign. There were questions in Parliament, women protesting outside Holloway where Jones was imprisoned. Even in the 1990s, reporters asked Betty for contact with Jones (which she did not have), because the case had over the years changed the public perception of these desperate women. Betty continued to be interested in cases of 'baby-snatching', amassing many press cuttings on the subject from 1971-2002.. Her papers on this, for a planned book, together with the archive of the National Housewives Register and the personal papers of Rachel Pinney, the child therapist, have been donated to The Women's Library, part of London Metropolitan University, in East London.

In later life, suffering from macular degeneration, with steely but quiet determination she seamlessly swapped the printed word for the spoken word, adopting talking books, talking newspapers and of course, a great favourite, Radio 4. She went on to campaigned quietly to spread knowledge and usage of these and other helpful pieces of equipment to others similarly afflicted.

She is survived by her children Seth, Stacey and Toby, grandchildren James, Hannah and Emily and great grandchild Reece.

Betty Jerman, journalist and author, instigator and campaigner 26 June 1922 - 8 July 2010