The ICCM Journal | Autumn 2020 | V88 No. 3
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could hardly walk and Frieda was very worried. However, once home, the treatments started to show improvements and Ralph went into a long period of recovery before he was able to contemplate working again. Happily, he found a post as a GP in Bridport where he worked until retirement, bringing up a family of four children on West Street, in a house which provided space for a Doctor’s Surgery and a Waiting Room, as well as space for family life. (see left. The house is now a Post Office.) In a strange and disturbing interview with those responsible for managing the Baptist Missionary Society’s activities, Ralph was challenged to explain how he was planning to repay the money which the Society had spent funding his training to become qualified as a doctor. Feeling quite shocked and distressed at the unfeeling and aggressive nature of such a question, knowing as they did that Ralph came close to losing his life in Bolobo, Ralph stood up and spoke to the Committee, saying “I will repay every penny!” And he then walked out and did indeed repay the full amount eventually. A shocking story indeed. Among the graves in Burton Bradstock village cemetery, as opposed to the churchyard, alongside the Sailors from 1915 and Marion’s parents, we found the grave of Marion’s Auntie Winifred Stanford (1897-1985). Winnie was the sister of Doctor Ralph Stanford, and she also became a Baptist Church missionary serving first in Kenya and then with her brother in the Belgian Congo. However, her life seemed, to me at least, somewhat a depleted experience. Her anticipation of death led her to decry any attempt to memorialise her life. She declared that her grave was not to be marked with her name or any other information about her, and she just wanted to rest in peace and, in effect, to be forgotten by this world.
Aunty Winnie’s grave today
I have some sympathy with this Ivory artefacts, some hand-carved by local Bolobo African residents, brought home to England in 1931 point of view, but Marion’s parents couldn’t really cope with this during their life-time and when Winnie died in 1985, they had made a wooden memorial bearing Winnie’s name and details. The choice of wood was to try and fulfil Winnie’s wishes. Wood would quite quickly deteriorate, leaving no information about the occupant of the grave. And when Marion and I arrived at the cemetery in 2019, some 35 years later, Winnie’s wish was clearly to be found accomplished. The wooden memorial was now devoid of information, lying flat on the ground, and her grave was just an anonymous plot in the cemetery. Winnie’s wishes, were, in fact, now being observed, and Marion and I stood quietly and remembered her, and acknowledged her modesty and accepted the reality that in fact, all our lives will in due course be forgotten, apart from the famous few who have hit the headlines, for good or ill, during their lifetime. It felt good, and I reflected that when my time comes, I would like to have my ashes buried in an unmarked place. I too would like to have no memorial, no name or dates on my burial place. Just being dead is good enough. Prebendary Neil Richardson
