Beryl Knotts obituary

My aunt Beryl Knotts, who has died aged 92, was a social worker who brought an unfailing cheerfulness to friends she made all over the world through her work for disaster relief, with Oxfam and other organisations. She had a winning combination of mischief and optimism based on her Christian faith.

Born in Epsom, Surrey, she came from a close family; her father, Lyn, was an electrical and signals engineer on the railways, which inspired Beryl’s brother, John, to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. Her mother, Kath (nee Treacher), dreamed of working as an architect but was steered into more “suitable” work as a secretary.

Beryl sensed the waste and at 19 – following schooling at the Grey Coat Hospital in Westminster and Farnham girls’ grammar school – with the backing of her mother she left a dull job as a farm secretary for social work in children’s services and two diploma courses, at Edinburgh University and the London School of Economics.

An early episode when she had to remove six children from an unsafe home – armed with chocolate, her Ford Anglia and the address of a convent – prepared her for challenges to come. In 1966, stimulated by a student working trip to Canada, she joined a medical and social work team on the high Amazon 500 miles upstream from Manaus in Brazil.

When that contract came to an end in 1969 she backpacked round South America, which sealed her love of distant countries and their people. Returning to the UK on a boat transporting bauxite, she took up a post with Oxfam, soon heading out to Peru when an earthquake struck in 1970. She worked from 1971 to 1973 in Nigeria with the International Union of Child Welfare, helping homeless children following the Biafra war. She was then based at the IUCW’s headquarters in Geneva for five years before returning to the UK to work for Oxfam again, in 1978.

Her human qualities always shone out, but Oxfam and the IUCW also recognised her organising skills. She devised and led child aid programmes in southern Sudan and Nigeria, reported on staff salaries in India, reviewed Oxfam’s work in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and, at Oxfam’s HQ in Oxford, strengthened frontline resources and revised the field directors’ handbook.

She was Oxfam overseas personnel officer from the mid-1980s until her retirement in 1991. She was appointed MBE and (unknown to her family until after her death) was awarded the Daniel Carrión medal for humanitarian services to Peru.

After retirement Beryl was a byword for charity and United Reformed Church work; she welcomed a stream of visitors from all over the world until shortly before her death.

She is survived by her nieces, Sue and me, her nephew, Peter, two great-nieces and two great-nephews. She called her private memoir Led By a Kindly Light; like John Henry Newman, the writer of the famous hymn, she knew about the encircling gloom but gave all that she had to dispel it.