CATHERINE BENN enjoyed a full and varied life and was unusual for one of her generation in that she combined important professional work in varied forms with the demands of family life. Her support for her husband in his demanding career, latterly as chairman of Benn Brothers, was exemplary, her outgoing personality, charm and resourcefulness proving the perfect complement to his more shy and retiring character.
Beatrice Catherine Newbald was born in 1910 and educated at Kent College, Folkestone, a secretarial college and later at London University. Her first job was on the advertising side of Benn Publishers. In 1930 she became private secretary to one of the family directors, Glanvill Benn, who felt this would prove a temporary arrangement, as such an attractive personality was bound to leave soon to get married. Six months later she became Mrs Benn, the beginning of a serenely happy marriage that lasted 69 years. Life in the 1930s, despite the increasing shadows over the international scene, proved happy and fulfilled and she made many contacts through her work. Selwyn Lloyd, a future Foreign Secretary, became a lifelong family friend (and godfather to her daughter), and her work for the Charities Aid Society led to the invitation in 1938 by the widow of another Foreign Secretary, Lady Reading, to become one of the founding members of the WVS, together with Mrs Montagu Norman, wife of the governor of the Bank of England, and Mrs Walter Elliot, wife of the Secretary of State for Scotland. Her work for the WVS, which mobilised women’s war work, was recognised in the Commonwealth and in America, where she worked for a time in 1939. At its peak the membership was more than one million. After the war Benn was appointed MBE for her services.
With the end of her work for the WVS, Benn helped in establishing the Friends of Southwark Cathedral and began a new career as a golf administrator, first for the Surrey Ladies County Golf Association (of which she was president in 1974-76) and later the committee of the Ladies’ Golf Association, of which she became chairman in 1976. She was an enthusiastic and skilful player, and became successively lady captain of Tandridge, Royal Wimbledon, and Aldeburgh, to which she and her husband retired, enjoying the rural and musical opportunities of the area. There she worked tirelessly for the parish church of St Peter.
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Catherine Benn, MBE, founder member of the Women’s Voluntary Service for Civil Defence and golf administrator, was born on July 2, 1910. She died on January 15, 2006, aged 95.