Meet the Local Associations: 5, Wirral

It is perhaps apt that Wirral, as one of its amenity-societies proclaims: "eighteen miles long and six to seven wide, is a miniature of England as a whole"?and that here such pioneering moves should have been made; not the earliest but well in the van. Naturally enough, it was at the "business end" of the peninsula, in Birkenhead, that the inaugural meeting of the Wirral Association for Mental Health was held, under the Presidency of Freda, Viscountess Leverhulme, with Dr. Alfred Torrie as the speaker. The Mayor of Birkenhead, Alderman Frank Garstang, M.A., J.P., was elected the Association's first Chairman, and Mrs. E. B. James, a well-known marriage guidance counsellor and wife of the consultant psychiatrist for the area, became the Honorary Secretary. Even before the end of 1951 two talks had been given to interested audiences of local organisations. Local authorities were quick to appreciate the value of a movement of this nature and a number of them responded to the suggestion that co-opted nominees should join the Committee. Another early significant reacti"' by a public body was the ready adop tion by the Upton Mental Hospi^ Management Committee of tbl proposal carried at the Association first annual meeting that the Manag? ment Committee be asked to di?\ the word "mental" from the hospita^ title. Subsequently the name Dev Hospital was substituted. In 1952/53 the Association ^ responsible for a pilot enquiry, baS&