Perhaps the lasting achievement of my mother, Audrey Maxwell-Timmins, who has died aged 101, was the part she played in the creation in 1983 of Broken Rites, which campaigns for the rights of those abandoned when clergy marriages go wrong.
Her involvement followed her personal experience of the way the Methodist church struggled to help when she and my father separated in the 1970s. As a result of the group’s campaigning, churches of various denominations now provide better support to spouses when marriages break down, including in helping to find housing and working out pension-sharing arrangements.
Audrey was born in Mousehole, Cornwall, to staunch Methodist parents, John Troon, a pharmaceutical company representative, and Agnes (nee Nicholas). The family moved to Bristol, where Audrey went to the Central school and later, as a slip of a 19-year-old, volunteered on the ambulances during the second world war while also working as a shorthand typist at the Ministry of Works. The Methodist connection saw her meet Tim – the Rev Leslie Timmins (nee Maxwell-Timmins) – who was training for the ministry in the city, and they married in 1947.
Having worked for the Bristol department store Maggs, Audrey became a school secretary in the 1950s, then taught religious education for a time at Lady Edridge grammar school in south London before moving to the Royal College of Nursing and then the YMCA in public relations roles.
She was also a part-time editor of the Methodist Recorder’s women’s page in the 60s, and in the 70s became news editor and then editor of Therapy – a weekly newspaper for physiotherapists, occupational and other therapists. Though Leslie had never used the Maxwell of his surname, Audrey had repurposed it as her journalistic byline.
In 1983, while continuing as a consultant to Therapy, she became the founding director of Vocal, a charity promoting speech therapy. She did not retire until well into her 70s and it is a tribute to her ability to encourage others and inspire friendship that many of those she worked with remained actively in touch until the end.
Broken Rites was needed because the tied nature of much clergy housing, plus the role that wives were expected to play as unpaid supporters of their husband’s ministry (and back then it was only wives), meant that those who were separated could find themselves homeless and potentially in penury. Too often the default stance of the churches was to side, financially and morally, with the ordained.
Audrey got in touch with Frank Field MP, who was already raising the issues. He set up a meeting with her and 25 other separated or divorced wives, and told them they had to organise. Audrey became the first chair of Broken Rites and Lord Field remains its president.
Tim died in 1992. She is survived by her two sons, Jerry and me, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
