With the passing of Miss Bertha James on January 13th last, the cause of those who are suffering from mental illness or mental defect has lost one of its most devoted adherents.
It was in 1895 that Miss James founded the Society of the Crown of Our Lord, to enlist the help of members of the Anglican Church in this cause, and afterwards, with the co-operation of Dr Shuttleworth, she studied its practical aspects as seen at the Royal Albert Institution, Lancaster, and at the Colony of Mercy, Bielefeld, Denmark.
On her return, she joined Miss Margaret Macdowall in opening the school for mentally defective children at Ealing, which afterwards moved to Burgess Hill and became so widely known.
The Society which she founded has been active ever since its beginnings, and is now responsible for the home for mentally defective girls at West Moors, Dorset, and the similar one at Basingstoke under the care of the Sisters of the Transfiguration.
We learn from the Church Times, to whose columns we are indebted for some of the details here recorded, that it was Miss James's ardent hope " that some day a Religious Order might come into being to care for the insane and the defective, but she died with this vision unfulfilled."