Sir Arthur Pearson’s lieutenant – Mary Hamar Greenwood
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11 April 2017 18:00
Mary Hamar Greenwood was one of the first supporters recruited by Blind Veterans UK. Our founder Sir Arthur Pearson believed that people who had themselves lost their sight were the best teachers of the blind.
Born in 1865, Mary was from Whitby in Ontario, Canada; her father John was a British émigré lawyer who became a mayor of Whitby. The eldest of six siblings, Mary studied nursing in the United States and went on to a distinguished career at the John Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore. Sadly she lost her sight and in 1915 decided to travel to England. Her brother Thomas was already in the country, and had become a Member of Parliament. Thomas’ great grandchildren include model Poppy Delevingne and her sister, model and actress Cara Delevingne.
Sixty years on, he still remembered her warmly, writing in our magazine, the “Review”, of his time at the hospital that ‘…friends from St Dunstan’s had come to help us. One in particular was Miss Hamar Greenwood, herself blind, who began to teach us to read Braille while we were in hospital.’
Mary’s time at the 2nd London General Hospital was the start of a very long association with us. The photo above, which we believe dates from 1919, shows her on a visit to us in Regent’s Park. Mary became a member of our Executive Council in 1924 and continued to serve on this until her death in 1953. She supported us in many other ways, including visiting our centres and attending reunion events for our blind veterans. In the photo below she is pictured, on the right, in 1935 at one of these events in Brighton.
Mary’s brother, Thomas, went on to serve in the Cabinet and became Viscount Greenwood. Thomas’ daughter Angela, the grandmother of Poppy and Cara Delevingne, was a well-known society figure. She even spent time in Hollywood and was offered a role, which sadly she was unable to take up, in ‘Gone with the Wind’.
Mary died at the age of 88. Leo Amery wrote of her that:
"When what was already a remarkable career seemed cut short by blindness, she resolved to start afresh, and threw herself with undaunted zest, as one of Sir Arthur Pearson’s lieutenants, into the work for blinded soldiers..."
