DEATH OF MRS. AGNES SLACK-SAUNDERS

White Ribbon, Volume 18, Issue 3, 1 April 1946, Page 6

DEATH OF MRS. AGNES SLACK-SAUNDERS

The following letter has just been received: — Dear Mrs. Christian, Mrs. Agnes E. Slack-Saunders, for more than fifty years Hon. Secretary, World’s W.C.T.U., died on January 16th, 1946, at her home in Golder’s Green, London. I have no further information as yet, as this came by cable. The next number of the “Bulletin” will be a memorial number. Sincerely yours, ELLA BOOLE, Pres., World’s W.C.T.U.

Tribute from the President, World’* Women * Christian Temperance Union M> first meeting with ’ Agnes E. Slack was in 18%. Miss Willard, who was tPe guest of Lady Henry Somerset at East nor Castle, England, was not well enough to return to the United States. She had asked the new Corresponding Secretary of the World’s W.C.T.U. to take her engagements for the summer and fall conventions. Madame Demorest, Mrs. Mary T. Burt and I, with a group of New York members, met Miss Slack at the dock when she arrived on the “F’aris.” It was her first visit to the United States and her first public address was in the auditorium at Chautauqua. She was greeted by a great crowd which gave her the “Chautauqua Salute,’’ which she called a “handkerchief salute.’’ She was young, attractive in person, vigormis in her presentation of the temperance cause, and her English ways greatly pleased her hearers.

I saw her “in action” it ten World's Conventions, ‘he first : .n Edinburgh in 1600 and the last in Washington, D.C., in 1937. In every convention she was an outstanding figure, intense, enthusiastic and keenly alert to every phase of the convention. Since 1031 v.e have been closely associated, and scarcely a week lias passed in which we have not exchanged letters. We have been friends as well as officers. Miss Slack was a guest in our home several times. We found her an interesting conversationalist with a fund of experience and wide acquaintance with prominent people in every country she has visited. She was home-loving and hospitable. She loved he r home in Golder’s Green, which had been bombed in 1Q39, and she was not able to return to it until last November. We are glad that she bad one year of happiness during the war years when she lived at Kettering with her husband. Mr. Charles Saundeis. His death was a great sorrow to her for they were good companions with many interests in common.

Mrs. Agnes E. Slack-Saunders had been Honorary Secretary of the World’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union for fifty years, a wonderful record of faithful service which few can duplicate or even approach in any organisation of men and women.