janet lynch

Community and Voluntary Action  

1935 - 2020  

Suggested by Alison Meaton  

Alison writes,
“Janet made a positive difference to thousands of people through her work for equality, housing and social justice. She trained as an accountant and used this knowledge to support charities, hostels, rehabilitation and welfare centres. Janet was part of the group that established the Cornwall Samaritans which took its first call in 1970 with Janet as one of the listeners. Janet was also part of a Circle of Accountability working with sex offenders after their release from prison and was recognised as the local peoples advocate for the voluntary sector in West Cornwall.  

Janet was a Quaker who lived her faith. The Quaker testimonies, Peace, Equality, Simplicity and Truth were deeply important to her. Simplicity, managing one’s finances and not over consuming led to Janet’s shoe theory. One only needs 2 pairs of shoes; one pair drying and one to wear. I didn’t meet Janet but her legacy is not only the charities she set up and supported, but memories of her kindness and humanity for the excluded of our society.  

Janet was headteacher at Fowey Grammar School, then resident warden at Fowey Hall Residential Teachers Centre. She married in 1974 and set up home on an eight-acre smallholding in Penzance. She left Cornwall in 2010, now widowed to live near her daughter in Bristol.   

Researching Janet’s life has been tricky: there are some obscure links to Quaker documents which don’t give much information, but from what I have found out I am struck by her kindness. Not a marshmallow soft kindness but the tough love that is needed. She spent many years playing scrabble with a profoundly deaf friend and she would scribe the conversation so the friend could join in while also scoring the scrabble game.
A life well lived.”