| Activity | Lucy Fildes was born in Worcester, England, in 1884, the youngest of the four children of Thomas William Fildes, a cabinet maker, and his wife Harriet Fildes (née Corbett).
Lucy originally trained as a teacher, obtaining a BA degree by private study at the same time; and then lectured at a teacher training college for nine years.
This was a common employment destination at a time when there were few academic posts for psychologists in Britain.
In 1913 she entered Bedford College to study psychology under Beatrice Edgell, where her “general ability and maturity marked her out from the beginning as a first class student”, as Edgell remarked in a reference letter and Fildes did indeed graduate with a first class honours degree two years later.
At Bedford College she conducted an innovative investigation of object recognition, which was published in 1915.
But in 1918 C.S. Myers invited her to undertake research on the causes of mental subnormality and specific disorders in people otherwise without handicap, in the Cambridge laboratory, funded by the Medical Research Council.
Frederic Bartlett, who succeeded Myers as director of the Cambridge lab (and trained the next generation of professors of psychology), considered Fildes “without exception the most capable research worker in her subject” that he had ever met. He goes on “She has dealt extraordinarily well with the children who have come under her observation, all her research has been directed by real ideas; none of it has been the mere collection of unrelated facts. She can write well and concisely. She has an independent mind and has throughout formulated her own problems & dealt with them by her own methods. In fact I cannot think of anybody who seems to me nearly as well qualified to take the post for which she is applying and to make a success of it.”
Sir Henry Head invited her to submit an article on so-called word-blindness (dyslexia in current terminology) to the journal Brain, of which he was the editor. This paper (Fildes, 1921) became a classic. It aimed to provide a psychological analysis of dyslexia. It reported twelve experiments comparing readers and non-readers on visual and auditory discrimination and
retention, and the ability to associate spoken names with shapes. Non-readers had difficulty with discrimination and particularly with retention of visually similar forms (the same form in different orientations, or when a part was repeated in a different surround). They were likely to confuse mirror images.
Fildes published several other studies in the British Journal of Psychology, on topics such as left-handedness, mirror writing, and learning in mental defectives.
From 1925‒28 Fildes worked with violent adult defectives in State Institutions for Dangerous and Violent Offenders at Rampton and Warwick, funded by a Board of Control Research Studentship.
She also investigated psychological aspects of aphasia and other disorders in patients at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in Queen Square, London.
And in 1929 she completed a doctoral thesis on word deafness.
In 1929 Fildes was appointed Chief Psychologist at the newly opened London Child Guidance Clinic in Canonbury, North London. Fildes undertook casework, staff training and the administration involved in setting up a new service. The Clinic dealt with 1900 cases in its first four and a half years, conducting over 9000 interviews in 1935 alone. They also examined over 5000 juvenile offenders on remand in a 3-year project.
In 1943 she initiated and chaired what was known as the Fildes Committee, which became the Committee of Professional Psychologists (Mental Health). This was the prime vehicle within the British Psychological Society for engagement with the National Health Service to achieve elements of professionalization, and led to the formation of the Divisions within the Society, Fildes being the senior founding member of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology.
Fildes had a profound influence on policy, partly through teaching but also by serving in an advisory capacity to a wide range of organisations concerned with mental disabilities.
She designed and lectured on courses for teachers of backward children organised by the Central Association for Mental Welfare. She was a tutor on the London School of Economics Diploma in Mental Health training course for psychiatric social workers; and Director of Studies for courses run for School Medical Officers ‒ doctors who were responsible for deciding whether children were in need of special education ‒ organised by the University of London Extra-Mural Department in conjunction with the Central Association for Mental Welfare, later the National Association for Mental Health.
She was psychological advisor to the Waifs and Strays Society, Dr Barnardo’s Homes and the Chalfont Epileptic Colony.
Fildes served as a member of the Curtis Committee which reported in 1946, to inquire into the provision made for children deprived of a normal home life.
This formed the basis of the 1948 Children’s Act, which revolutionised provision for child care.
Her work was recognised nationally by the award of an OBE (recommended by the Ministries of both Health and Education) in 1951.
In 1944 Kent Education Committee asked her to set up a Child Guidance Clinic in Tonbridge, Kent, which later moved to Tunbridge Wells. She worked there part-time until she was 80 years old, dying four years later. |