Dudley Wootton Everrit 1901 - 1972
December 31, 2008
Dudley
Wootton Everrit1901 - 1972, MPS, Honorary Associate Member of the
Faculty of Homeopathy, was the head of Nelson’s
Pharmacy, and a Trustee of the
Royal London Homeopathic
Hospital,
who died with his
wife Margot Wootten
Everitt
in
the Staines plane crash in
1972.
Homeopaths and homeopathic supporters Isabel Campbell, Marjorie Golomb, (Sisters) Kawther Theresa Kandalla and Ludi Marylone Kandalla, Sergei William Kadleigh, Mary Stevenson, Joan Mackover, John Robertson Raeside, Elizabeth Somerville Stewart and Thomas Fergus Stewart, and Elizabeth Sharp Hawthorn 1918-1972 also died in that fatal crash.
Dudley Everitt was a close friend of John Bertram Leslie Ainsworth, Evelyn Eglington, Donald MacDonald Foubister, John DaMonte and very many others.
Dudley Everitt was a Trustee of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.
From John Bertram Leslie Ainsworth For citation purposes, publication details; British Homeopathic Journal - Vol. 61, No. 4 - October 1972 page 252:
Mr. D. W. Everitt, M.P.S. who, with his wife, died in the recent Trident air disaster, was a leading figure in homeopathic pharmacy, both nationally and internationally, and he will be sadly missed by his many friends and colleagues throughout the world. They leave two daughters.
I came to know him well during 26 years of business association at A. Nelson and Co. Ltd., for I joined the Company in 1946 immediately on my discharge from the Army.
It is to him that I owe my knowledge of Homeopathy, for he spent many hours and days explaining the detail of this specialized branch of medicine which calls for a true understanding of pharmacy in the most complete sense.
His varied interests were undoubtedly stimulated by his contact with the profession of pharmacist, especially in homeopathic pharmacy which retains so many traditional medicaments, holding steadfastly to that which is good despite many new innovations in pharmaceuticals which have increasingly displace the older drugs in standard practice.
He was born in Croydon in 1901, was educated at Whitgift School, and then took a course in civil engineering. He did not take this up as a career and entered banking for a time.
Nearby the Croydon home lived the Nelson family and in 1942 he married Marjory, eldest daughter of Ernest L. N. Nelson, son of the founder and then owner of “Nelson’s” Homœopathic Pharmacy. Ernest’s father, Armbrecht Nelson, founded the Company in London in 1860. Mr. Everitt joined the firm in 1926 and qualified in 1929. At that time the Pharmacy was engaged in the preparation of homœopathic medicines and nostrums, as well as producing Coca wine and Pyrethrum powder and liquid.
Mr. Nelson was perhaps the first pharmacist to procure radium for use in the preparation of Radium Water, a speciality found most effective in the treatment of rheumatism and allied complaints. Bottles were sold at £3 3s. 0d. each, even at that time.
The Coca wine necessitated adequate cellarage for the large pipes of burgundy wine which were infused with Coca leaves, and space was found at 73 Duke Street, which building was the third home of the Company and was built by the founder.
The homeopathic side of the business steadily developed under Mr. Everitt’s guidance, and reached a standard of excellence which persuaded the late Royal Physician Sir John Weir, G.C.V.O., to entrust to the Pharmacy the dispensing of homeopathic medicines for his illustrious clientele, and it was this action that probably brought about a very considerable increase in prescription dispensing activity from that time onward. In 1930 the Limited Company was formed.
After the War international connections were developed steadily, and when I joined the firm it was to be in an era of expanding activity.
Mr. Everitt’s hobbies were stamp collecting (he had a very large collection from correspondence all over the world), and gardening. He grew many plants used in homeopathic pharmacy in his Maidenhead garden. He was a keen motorist and travelled a great deal on the Continent. He was interested in anthropology, and had made a pre-war world trip taking in a visit to a coconut plantation in New Guinea which he owned at that time. He was also an active Freemason.
He will be sadly missed in homeopathic circles, he had been a Council Member of the British Homeopathic Association for many years; latterly he was Hon. Treasurer of the Homeopathic Research and Educational Trust of the Faculty of Homeopathy, and was the first Honorary Associate Pharmaceutical member of the Faculty of Homeopathy.
Mr. Everitt had been a member of the Comite International Des Pharmaciens Homeopathes since 1955, holding the office of President twice, the last occasion being in 1971 when the Committee met at Strasbourg in the Council of Europe building. Regretfully his unfulfilled trip to Brussels would have continued the work started at Strasbourg, and would have had an important bearing in relation to Common Market Affairs.
Fortunately, just prior to this trip he had seen the fulfilment of four years’ work in relation to the regulations to be made in the Medicines Act concerning homeopathic medicines. In this work he had the able assistance of F. W. Adams, B.SC., F.P.S., F.R.I.C., former Secretary and Registrar of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, and a few days before they left for Brussels, the Company was advised that all the homeopathic products it produces had been granted a Licence of Right. In addition the necessary Manufacturing Licence was in hand with the Department of Health and Social Security following a valuable visit from the licensing officers at the D.H.S.S.
The double tragedy is that Mr. Adams and his wife perished in the same aircraft, thus cutting short what had developed into an extremely valuable association with Homeopathy, and which would undoubtedly have developed greatly in the future.
A. Nelson and Company Limited is continuing operations in this specialized field, and it is to be expected that it will be called upon to play an increasing role in the field of medicine, for despite lingering doubt relating to the unusual concept of the infinitesimal dose modern preoccupation with pollution and ecology will find in this system of medicine an exquisite concept of conservation of material which will be, perhaps, the most important contribution to be made to our global existence for the future.
Dudley Everitt was a Trustee of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.
From Llewelyn Ralph Twentyman From his Address at the Memorial held at St George The Martyr on 29-6-72 For citation purposes, publication details; British Homeopathic Journal 1972; 61: 130e133: ‘… And then, DUDLEY EVERITT, perhaps more widely known in the world of Homoeopathy, and really it is a world, in the five continents, than anyone else perhaps from this country. Whoever came to congresses when we had them in this country, found that the wheels worked smoothly, found that all the strife and conflicts which are part of the activities of this world, had by Dudley Everitt’s self-effacing tact been smoothed away. I know from his colleagues on the Continent, how grateful they were, that this man, who looked so modest, who looked so gentle, had the capacity of justice in their Councils in Europe where they met. The more we learnt to know him, the more we experienced and saw his wisdom in our Councils, the more I think we learnt to honour him. And there was with him Margot, his wife, always so full of good-natured humour...’
There were no survivors when the plane crashed, less than four minutes after taking off for Brussels. Its wheels had been retracted and the plane was climbing when it suddenly dropped, skimming over high-tension power lines and across the tops of cars before crashing on its underside.
The impact broke the plane’s spine, ripping off the tail section and sending it spinning through the air. The fuselage slewed across the muddy field and hit a line of trees on the edge of a reservoir.
The plane had hit an incredibly small space - a field no more than 100 yards wide. The way in which it crashed suggested that it might have lost virtually all power; it came almost straight down, missing houses on either side of the field.
A stall, from which the pilot would need a lot of height to recover even if it were not of the dangerous “deep” variety, would have the same effect…
Thirty four Britons were killed in the crash, including the crew. There were 29 passengers from the United States, 29 Belgians, 12 Irish, four South African, three Canadian, one Thai, two Jamaicans, one Latin American, one Indian, one French Afrique, and one Nigerian. There were between 25 and 30 women passengers, as well as two or three children.
The Department of Trade and Industry said the pilot’s last message to ground control came two minutes after take-off. It said “Up to 60” which the DTI said, “Is quite a normal message.” It means the pilot was climbing to a level of 6,000 feet.”
After the crash, wreckage was scattered for a radius if almost four hundred yards around the shattered fuselage. The hundreds of workers struggling in clinging mud and a steady drizzle to cut their way into the buckled remains of the plane were hampered through the night by hundreds of sight-seers flocking towards the area.
Mr. Cranley Onslow, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Aerospace, who went to the scene, said “callous” sight-seers were hampering the rescue workers. Two hours after the crash, all roads in the area were jammed by traffic.
The Trident, on flight BE 548 and code named G-ARPI, left Heathrow at 5.02pm with 109 passengers and nine crew members. By 5.06pm, it had crashed.
A man who had been driving along the A30 told police: “The plane just came whizzing in, along the road. You could have reached up and touched it.”
Heathrow aircraft control sounded the full scale disaster alert, and all airport emergency appliances, together with all available fire engines, ambulances, and police patrol cars for eight miles around sped to the scene. Nine hospitals in the area prepared to receive casualties, and doctors were brought in for emergency duty. In the event, they were not needed.
As the first teams of firemen reached the wreck site - throughout the night they were to work at considerable personal risk as the aircraft contained tones of highly flammable fuel - they clawed with their hands in desperate attempts to reach the passengers inside. A local doctor who ran to the spot said: “It was ghastly, sickening. A terrible mess.”
As police blocked off surrounding roads, other rescue teams began knocking down fences to enable ambulances to reach the plane. By 7pm, 70 bodies had been lifted from the fuselage and laid in long rows along the ground.
Long lines of rescuers formed in the steady drizzle, passing the broken bodies of the victims gently from the shattered fuselage to the ambulances. A number of the rescuers, police and firemen, were crying. One policeman said a small girl died in his arms as he carried her towards an ambulance.
One man was taken out of the wreckage with head injuries but died in hospital. He is understood to be Mr Melville Miller, managing director of Rowntree Mackintosh (Ireland) Limited.
A mobile crane was brought into the field to lift parts of the wreckage away; the rescuers could not use oxyacetylene cutters because of the risk of an explosion. Relays of ambulances began taking the bodies to the special mortuary.
Mr Michael Stephens, of Staines, said he was cycling along a road near by “When I looked up and saw the tail of a plane bounce into the air … then the rest of the plane burst into flames.” The fire was an isolated electrical fault and was quickly put out.
Miss Christine Wallis said she was walking past the reservoir with friends when “bits of metal began flying around us … the plane split up as it tore along the ground.”
Last night teams of investigators from the Department of Trade and Industry and the British Airline Pilots’ Association arrived at the scene to find out the contents of the flight recorders.
The same plane was involved in a collision in July 1968, at Heathrow. It was stationary at one of the terminal piers when a freighter jet carrying horses got out of control and crashed into its side. Five people were killed in the freighter. The Trident’s tail was torn off.
Two seconds after the droops were retracted, the stick pusher stall recovery device operated, causing the autopilot to automatically disengage and the nose of the aircraft to pitch down. At that moment, the stall recovery system was manually inhibited by one of the pilots.
The aircraft then pitched up rapidly, losing speed and height, entering a true aerodynamic stall and then a deep stall from which no recovery was possible. Impact occurred 20 seconds later. An autopsy on the captain suggested that he had probably had a heart attack during the short flight.
Nelsons’ history begins with the founding father of homeopathy himself: Samuel Hahnemann. In 1860, his student, Ernst Louis Ambrecht, moved to England from Germany and opened a homeopathic pharmacy in Ryder Street, London. The pharmacy soon outgrew its premises and relocated to its current location at 73 Duke Street.
Choosing a very English name, Ernst Louis Ambrecht changed his name to Nelson, and the Nelsons brand was born. The Nelsons Homeopathic Pharmacy was to become the centrepiece of Nelsons’ heritage and experience for over 140 years, and, alongside its sister store in Dublin, continues to provide the same high quality medicines, advice, expertise and service. In the early 1970s, the remaining descendants of the Nelson family were involved in a fatal plane crash, leaving Nelsons without leadership.
Dudley Everitt donated boxed homeopathic remedies to every graduate of the Missionary School of Medicine, but this stopped after his tragic death in 1972.
Dudley Everitt contributed to homeopathic provings,