36 Facts About Joan Court

Joan Court was a British midwife and social worker who set up the Battered Child Research Department at the NSPCC.

Joan Court was 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 Court'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.

Muriel succumbed to alcoholism and Joan Court retreated from her mother's rages and found solace in her pet cats.

Joan Court determined to become a writer and took up life modelling to pay for a typewriter.

Joan Court 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.

In January 1943 Joan Court had begun to train as a midwife at Willesden.

On 14 October 1945 Joan Court sailed on the SS Strathnaver for India to work as a midwife in Calcutta for the Quakers.

Once the crisis in Bengal was over Joan Court moved to the Midwifery and Child Welfare Centre on Sitaram Ghosh street in Calcutta.

Joan Court went to help Gandhi who was fasting and walking from village to village to help restore peace.

Joan Court left London in 1949, meeting with Harry in New York for a week before going on to Kentucky to take up her position.

Joan Court completed six weeks of training in Wendover and Hyden in Kentucky before being allocated to the outpost of Flat Creek by the Red Bird River.

Joan Court's mother died while a severe winter took hold of Kentucky.

Joan Court arrived in Lahore, Pakistan in May 1951 to work with Jean Orkney training community health workers.

Lahore was a city Joan Court had always wanted to visit - said to have been founded by Alexander the Great, one of her heroes, and home to Kipling's Kim, her role model.

In 1951 there was a lot of political unrest following the partition of India and Joan Court dealt mainly with refugees.

Joan Court's family planning initiative earned Joan a rebuke from the Ministry of Health, who said they needed young men for the army.

Joan Court returned to London in May 1955, taking with her her beloved Siamese cat Simon.

At some time in the mid 1960s Joan Court spent time in Turkey working for the World Health Organization.

On her return to London, Joan Court took up a position with the NSPCC as team leader to pioneer research and treatment for battered babies.

In 1968 the Battered Child Research Unit was set up in Denver House, Ladbroke Grove and Joan Court became its first director.

Joan Court was highly influential in promoting child abuse as a social problem category and wrote prolifically on the subject in various welfare journals.

In 1970 Joan Court travelled overland to the Middle East and India.

At age 57 Joan Court was approaching compulsory retirement at 60.

Joan Court moved to Cambridge in 1977 and made a lifelong friend, Nicola Carmichael, while studying there.

When she graduated in 1979 Joan Court went off to Bengal where she met her friend Bela who she knew from the Calcutta riots in 1946.

In 1978 Joan Court went to protest in Trafalgar Square against the Canadian seal massacre.

Joan Court made another lifelong friend, Hilda Ruse, at Animal Aid meetings from about 1979.

Hilda took part in Animal Liberation Front raids and some of Joan Court's rabbits came from such raids.

Joan Court travelled with companion Darren Collis, joining the expedition from Brazil.

Joan Court protested outside the proposed site of the laboratory, undertaking a fast for 72 hours.

Joan Court was arrested for initiating this but the authorities were reluctant to prosecute an 88 year old.

In 2002, Joan Court published In the Shadow of Mahatma Gandhi, her account of her life up to the point she moved to Cambridge.

Joan Court received the Mahaveer Award for showing exceptional compassion to animals in 1999 and one of the RSPCA's highest awards, the Lord Erskine Award, in October 2008 for contributions to animal welfare.

Joan Court passed away quietly in her sleep on 1 December 2016 with her favourite cat Benji sleeping on her.