Penelope Putz obituary

Original article by Jim Putz

My wife, Penelope Putz, who has died aged 95, was a Quaker all her life and took inspiration from Quaker values. The passion she felt against injustice led her to become a committed activist.

Penelope campaigned for peace, the environment, with the Conservation Society (one of the first British environment societies) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), and against her pension being invested in fossil fuels. She was bitterly opposed to the Iraq war and wrote often to Tony Blair to tell him so. She attended peace vigils and the regular silent vigils in Exeter to support Palestine and protest against the inhumane bombardment of Gaza.

She was born in Wellington, Somerset. Her parents were Griselda (nee Bigland) and Lloyd Fox, both from Quaker families; Griselda contributed to the Guardian’s Country diary column for many years in the 1960s and 70s. Penelope attended the Mount school, York, and then went to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1949 to study history; I met her there through mutual Quaker friends and caught her interest when she heard that my father worked for the Manchester Guardian.

We married in 1952 and the following year moved to a small village in Devon, where Penelope set up and chaired a local branch of the Family Planning Association. She joined the National Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (NAWCH) after being shocked by our three-year-old daughter’s experience as a patient; she later campaigned nationally with the Conservation Society on green matters.

In 1973 she became a social worker, mainly dealing with people with learning disabilities. Before retiring, Penelope qualified as a counsellor and when she finished full-time employment in 1995 she worked with Cruse, the bereavement support charity, for a number of years.

Penelope loved to perform, acting in many amateur dramatic productions, writing sharp parody poems with a political message, which she shared with her friends.

There were things she disliked deeply: muzak in restaurants, extremes of heat and cold, bigots and autocrats, magpies and pigeons, weeds, bought cut flowers and waste of any kind.

Following a serious accident in 2024 while we were in the Greek islands, she persevered in order to return to her previous activities, using her buggy to get to demos and vigils.

She is survived by me, our three children, Catherine, Rachel and Nick, and two grandchildren, Ruth and Bridget. A great-granddaughter, Alma, was born four days after Penelope’s death.