Rose Hacker, who used her column to challenge stereotypes about older people. Photograph: Sean SmithLONDON, England (The Guardian), February 13, 2008:
Rose Hacker was, by anybody's reckoning, an extraordinary woman.
Fashion buyer, politician, older people's advocate, sex therapist and the nation's oldest columnist are just some of the roles she performed in her 101 years. When she died last week, the tributes came from far and wide.
Dame Denise Platt, chair of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, dedicated this year's State of Social Care report to the centenarian at a progress event on adult social care last week. They had shared a platform before Christmas, at which Hacker had spoken, according to Platt, "in a most dignified way about the indignities of old age".
As they were talking after the conference, Hacker had explained: "I am not a tick box. I am more than a tick box - I am a person."
Politically active throughout her life, Hacker fought against fascism in the 1930s, was president of Bertrand Russell's Progressive League, a member of the Fabians, and served on the Greater London Council in the 1970s.
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Death of Rose Hacker, the oldest columnist in the worldROSE Hacker, who has been writing a fortnightly column in the Camden New Journal died earlier this month at the age of 101.
Rose, who had been a successful author and sex therapist in the 1950s and 1960s, began the column in September 2006 after being approached by the Editor who had heard her deliver a speech on nuclear disarmament.
Rose was taken ill a fortnight ago and admitted to the Whittington Hospital in north London where she died.
During her illness wellwishers have inundated the CNJ's offices with cards and messages from all over the UK.
- Camden New Journal
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She regularly used her column in the Camden New Journal to challenge stereotypes about older people, and was a long-standing member of the older people's charity Counsel and Care.
Stephen Burke, the charity's chief executive, says: "She was a pioneer - whether that was as an advocate for older people, or better care or older journalists - and she continued to be a pioneer right until the end of her life."
Irene Kohler, director of the Westminster Advocacy Service for Senior Residents, and a friend of Hacker, says : "She always inspired people to look outside the box and made you think how your work could make a difference."
Hacker's last column, published a few days before she died, gave a flavour of her passion for social justice.
In her diatribe against financial advisers, she said that care systems need to put older people first, rather than profits. "I need a financial adviser like a hole in the head!" she wrote. "What I do need is finance, not advice. Old people need care when they need it not when they happen to fit somebody's busy schedule."
Read a selection of Rose Hacker's columns
By Alexandra Topping,
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
