Margaret Torrie founder Cruse Bereavement Care

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Margaret Torrie (has) died. (She was the) pioneering founder of Cruse Bereavement Care, the first national organisation for widows and their children. Her work helped to change social attitudes to widows and the role of women both in the family and in the workplace.

Cruse is now the largest bereavement care organisation in the world, with 185 branches in the UK, and last year offered support to more than 100,000 people.

It was started in 1959. At that time, Torrie, then an experienced social worker, and her husband, Alfred, a Quaker and psychiatrist, were experimenting with meditation techniques, concentrating on the meaning of compassion. "Out of the blue", as Torrie herself put it, "came a directive" to do something for widows.

With Alfred's support, she set about her task "to build beyond words and even beyond grief". At that time the UK's three million widows had no formal representation and it was Torrie who established a solid foundation for practical, emotional and social support for women and children left to cope alone.

Within months of her decision to set up Cruse, information and advice was being sent out and questionnaires had established that widows and their children were vulnerable members of society. Her book, Begin Again, a Book for Women Alone (1970) became the classic textbook for widows, offering sound advice about facing widowhood on emotional, practical and social levels "so that it may cease to be a despoiling experience and become an open door to a worthwhile future".

... Torrie also thought a great deal about the problems of ageing and wrote Completing the Circle (1982)