In 1998, at the peak of Ruth Wyner’s career as a manager of bold and innovative projects to help homeless people, a crowd of police officers clattered up the narrow stairs of the Wintercomfort day centre in Cambridge, squeezed into Ruth’s attic office and announced that they had arrested eight of her “clients” for dealing drugs.
“Excellent. Well done,” said Ruth. She was well-known for her anti-drugs stance; her anti-drugs policy, developed in cooperation with the police, was considered a model of good practice.
“We’re also arresting you,” said the police, “for knowingly allowing the distribution of a class A drug on the charity premises.”
The arrest, and Ruth’s subsequent imprisonment, provoked an international outcry, and ended the career of one of the most effective charity workers for homeless people.
Ruth, who has died aged 74, was a formidable campaigner for social justice and, following her release from prison in 2000, changed career and became a trailblazer in group therapy. Her life was marked by resilience, creativity and a commitment to helping those most in need.
Born in London, Ruth was the daughter of Anna (nee Nagley), a mosaic artist, and Percy Wyner, a hero of the Burma campaign who later became a cloth merchant. She attended St Paul’s girls’ school in west London, where she excelled at 100-metres hurdle and being troublesome. On leaving St Paul’s in 1968, she launched herself into hippy life with glee.
She edited one of the alternative magazines launched by John “Hoppy” Hopkins, became a local journalist, moved to Norwich, joined the band Crazy Lizard as songwriter, singer and synthesiser player, and moved in with the lead guitarist, Gordon Bell, her future husband. Crazy Lizard started with a benefit night for the homeless, “went off like a firework for a year” and ended with a “crazy, amazing” gig in a snowstorm at the end of Hastings pier.
For six years, Ruth and Gordon took over a deserted bungalow in a piece of industrial wasteland. After the birth of their first child, Joel, they got a friend to install electricity. “He went round hitting things until the lights came on. He didn’t know how he did it either.” When property developers started to sniff about, Ruth negotiated her first major fundraising deal: £1,000 to leave immediately. She used it as a deposit for a house, in time for the birth of a daughter, Rachel.
It was while she was in Norwich that Ruth’s younger brother killed himself by jumping from the window of a London homeless hostel. She rarely talked about this incident, but turned her despair into action. She began working overnight shifts in a “Dickensian” church, St Martin at Oak, supervising up to 40 homeless women and men facing addiction, mental health problems and poverty, eventually becoming the manager, then deputy director of the St Martins Housing Trust charity. Next, in Great Yarmouth, she set up, in the space of a single year, a new direct access hostel for the homeless.
With a reputation for bold thinking, quick action and brilliant campaign work, she was headhunted by Wintercomfort, a homelessness charity that operated out of an old bus in a Cambridge car park. Within three years she had moved premises to a four-storey converted dancing school overlooking the river and set up a highly efficient day centre, a winter night shelter and an outreach team.
Every day, between 70 and 120 people used the service: many drug addicts, more alcoholics, a good number of the mentally ill, many driven to the streets by mental or physical abuse, or grief. Ruth believed that homelessness has little to do with not having a house; that is the final, comparatively minor symptom of something that has gone profoundly wrong in a person’s life.
Ruth’s genius was to be able to negotiate a turbulent boundary of scales: on the one side, the large, generalising sweep of government-driven policy and the demands of law enforcement; on the other, the small, legally hazy dramas of the homeless. Because Ruth was able to remain professional and strong in this clash of contrary forces – negotiating, for example, a £400,000 deal for a new, alcohol-free night shelter with the city council, then hurrying back to the day centre to talk an alcoholic client out of taking her own life in the centre’s toilets – she lessened the misery of thousands and saved many lives.
Shortly after the news broke that the new night shelter was to be built next to a wealthy residential neighbourhood, the police installed a hidden camera in the roof of Jesus College rowing club, across the street from Wintercomfort and, following 300 hours of recording, confirmed eight heroin deals in the charity grounds.
The judge at the trial said that there was no evidence Ruth had encouraged or benefited from the drug dealing at the charity, only that she had not agreed with police on the best way to stop it taking place, and refused to hand over the charity’s list of banned users, on grounds of confidentiality. He sentenced Ruth to five years in prison.
Prison did not break Ruth. She adapted quickly. She learned the prison “slow walk”, developed an unexpected interest in violent films (which vanished on release), became a prison gardener, and started a book about life behind bars, From the Inside (2003). By the time her sentence was reduced to time served on appeal, she had breast cancer.
“Group therapy saved me,” Ruth said.
After her release, and recovery, Ruth travelled to China, India and Canada; she became a tai chi instructor, and trained as a group analyst at the Turvey Centre near Bedford. With its focus on both the individual and the wider community, group analysis perfectly suited Ruth’s extraordinary abilities as a communicator and guide.
For 17 years she worked at the Cambridge Group Therapy Centre, including as the clinical lead 2011-18.
Once again, she embraced inclusivity and openness. Unlike other group therapy practices, she refused to turn people away if they were drug addicts, or chaotic and traumatised; she welcomed them.
She is survived by Gordon, whom she married in 1978, Joel and Rachel, a grandson, Kaio, and two granddaughters, Ramona and Lydia.
• Ruth Avril Wyner, charity worker and group therapist, born 1 April 1950; died 29 December 2024
