Woman Returns To City After 27 Years

Press, Volume C, Issue 29621, 18 September 1961, Page 2

Woman Returns To City After 27 Years

A Christchurch woman is revisiting the city after an absence of 27 years. She is Mrs Paul Wood, wife of an eminent London cardiologist who has been invited to lecture in Christchurch. The couple will spend about a fortnight in New Zealand before leaving for Canada, where Dr. Wood will travel on a Sim’s professorship. He will also lecture in Cincinnatti.

Mrs Wood leads a full and busy life with a large house and garden to care for in North London. Her husband’s long and often inconvenient hours do not leave much time for leisure—family entertaining is limited to small dinner parties for close friends—but she does some social work in the East End, whieh she described in Christchurch yesterday. Mrs Wood’s weekly work is with the Cannington Women’s Settlement. It mostly involves families who need counselling for many problems. Many of these are financial, and include problems arising from hirepurchase agreements. Many of the old folk needed much care, said Mrs Wood. Many lived completely

on their own, and appreciated a social worker “dropping in" for a chat each week, and helping with various problems. The advantage of the voluntary social workers was that they really gotg*. .to know individual families, and thus how best to help them. ‘‘Many persons lead terribly miserable lives in the East End,’’ Mrs Wood said. Very little was being done to improve their living conditions, and the dilapidated and depressing state of many homes.

Although Britain was now a complete welfare State, this did not cover everything, Mrs Wood said. The voluntary social workers were a useful link between welfare officers and the persons in their care. Mrs Wood’s other great interests are books, paintings and music. Her children’s careers have kept her in touch with these interests. Her eldest son, Anthony, aged 25, has entered publishing, and her daughter, Juliet, is an artist married to an artist. .The couple live near Rome and will return to England later this year for the birth of their first child in Marsh. Mrs Wood’s other son is 14, and may study medicine. Mrs Wood is the daughter of Dr. John Guthrie, who was senior surgeon at Christchurch Hospital when she met her husband. Dr. Wood was then an intern at the hospital. He was born in India of English parents and later went to Australia where he studied medicine at Melbourne University. Apart from a brief visit to New Zealand 10 years ago, this is Mrs Wood's first return to the Dominion. In Landon she has maintained an interest in her old school (Marsden Collegiate School for Girls, Wellington), as its old girls’ association holds annual meetings in London.