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Rose – an inspiration
• ROSE Hacker was an inspiration, compassionate, well informed, pioneering and interesting.
It was a joy, indeed a privilege, to visit her well into her “second childhood”.
I well remember her drawing my mother (and a surly teenager me) into the Sunday lunches provided by the Camden Society for Mental Health, later Mind, in the 1960s. They hit on the idea of collecting leftover food before closing time on Saturdays at the local Marks & Spencer. They visited Friern Hospital to help assess patients for discharge to outside hostels.
One was a seamstress, a French lady, who had been admitted to the hospital about 20 years before.
She had been mending the hospital linen ever since and managed perfectly well later in her own flat. Camden Mind opened its first hostel in Chester Road, an Edwardian two-storey house let to them for a very low rent by the council.
It was set up entirely by volunteers from the Mind and Rose got down to it and cleaned floors.
More recently Rose became the oldest member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, hating religious bigotry and caring passionately for the women, men and children traumatised by the conflict
Irene Bruegel
Professor of Urban Policy
London South Bank University
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