Save the Children Fund Unofficial Papers: Papers of Margaret Stears

Three photograph albums formerly belonging to Margaret Stears, SCF worker in the Middle East from the late 1950s until the 1980s.

The photograph albums include undated colour photographs, many of them captioned, including scenes from Muscat, Jurf, Sur, Taiz, Kokaban, Marib, Sheba, Hodeida, Petra, Aqaba, and Damascus. The images depict SCF clinics, family groups, landscapes, market scenes, fishermen, school children and health students. One image depicts HRH Princess Anne on an SCF visit [possibly to Yemen].

Margaret Stears worked for SCF from the late 1950s until the 1980s, various stationed at Jordan, Syria, Yemen and Oman. She was working largely alone in Jordan in 1962 with limited knowledge of a local community she was visiting, when she found twin babies 'completely covered in sheep's dung - 'Arab medicine' - to keep them warm: only a quick lesson in 'how to wash' and 'how to make up the milk feeds' from infant formula resulted in a return to health and a realization on the part of the family of the benefits of 'the modern way of rearing babies'.

Source: 'Ken Loach and the Save the Children Film: Humanitarianism, Imperialism, and the Changing Role of Charity in Postwar Britain' by Matthew Hilton, published in 'The Journal of Modern History', Volume 87, Number 2. Accessed 2 October 2020 via: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/681133

Open, access to all registered researchers.

Please see full catalogue for more information.

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director of Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Material created by Margaret Stears and passed to her niece, Dr Kanen Stears.