Joan Court

Joan Court (13 April 1919 – 1 December 2016) was a British midwife and social worker who set up the Battered Child Research Department at the NSPCC. She was also a prominent figure in the animal rights movement.

The second of two children, Joan Court was born on 13 April 1919 in Knightsbridge Square, London, England, where her father Cecil was a solicitor with the family firm. Joan's mother Muriel was the daughter of the mayor of St Albans, Henry Gibson. Joan's parents separated in 1922 when she was three years old, Muriel taking the two children to live at Parsonage Farm, Rickmansworth, where her parents lived. After a year at Parsonage Farm, Muriel moved to Baker Street, London and Peter was sent to boarding school. Muriel succumbed to alcoholism and Joan retreated from her mother's rages and found solace in her pet cats.

In 1926 the family moved to 7 Stanley Villas in Marsh Lane, Pinner, not far from the railway station. In 1930 Cecil Court intervened and took Joan to a convent in Torquay. In the holidays Joan would return to Pinner. In the hot summer of 1932 Cecil Court committed suicide. Joan and her mother then entered domestic service in Cornwall to make ends meet, while Peter left for India to work for the Ceylon Tea Company.

McKenna was a lifelong vegetarian.

In 1934 the Society for Overseas Settlement of British Women offered Joan and her mother the opportunity to live in Cape Town, working in domestic service in a convent. During this time Joan took inspiration from Indian poets such as Rabindranath Tagore. She determined to become a writer and took up life modelling to pay for a typewriter. By 1936 the Mother Superior suggested to Joan that she become a nurse at St Thomas' in London, which she did, leaving her mother and girlfriend Jane behind in Cape Town.

Joan returned to Parsonage Farm before taking up a position at St Monica's Home of Rest in Bristol, in order to prepare for the Entrance Examination of the General Nursing Council. After two years she passed the examination and entered St Thomas' Hospital as a trainee nurse. During the course of her time there she met the soul mate of her youth, Liz, and served as a nurse when WW2 broke out. Unfortunately Liz developed multiple sclerosis and died in May 1943. In January 1943 Joan had begun to train as a midwife at Willesden.

On 14 October 1945 Joan sailed on the SS Strathnaver for India to work as a midwife in Calcutta for the Quakers. Her brother Peter met her when she arrived in Bombay and the next day she was on board the Calcutta Express train. Soon after arriving she was dispatched to areas of Bengal affected by a tidal wave and flooding. She met several of her heroes in India - in Bengal she nursed the daughter of Rabindranath Tagore and met Gandhi; and in Calcutta she heard E. M. Forster give a lecture on English Literature. At this time Joan also visited a number of Hindu and Buddhist sacred sites including the cave paintings in Ajunta.

Once the crisis in Bengal was over Joan moved to the Midwifery and Child Welfare Centre on Sitaram Ghosh street in Calcutta. In this service she met one of her dearest life-long friends, fellow nurse Bela Bannerjee. Supported by the Quakers with medicine and vitamin supplies, Joan did what she could to help alleviate the problems of terrible poverty in Calcutta. When the Calcutta riots broke out on 16 August 1946 the streets became dangerous so requests for a midwife would pass to Joan by word of mouth over the rooftops.