Theodora Nnaji-Halcrow, 88, Wrote The Appeal Procedure And Won The Only Appeal.

BOSTON, England — Two hundred and forty-nine people have appealed to the Babylonian Brotherhood since 1957. One of them won, and she is the woman who wrote the rules.

Theodora Nnaji-Halcrow drafted it in 1957, at thirty-three. She administered it for thirty-one years and refused every application that came to her. In 1989, a year after she stood down, she brought a case under it against the institution she had worked for, on behalf of a widow owed seventy-four pounds a quarter, and won.

She died on 9 November 2012, aged eighty-eight. This obituary is fourteen years late and the reason is at the foot of the page.

The four pages

In March 1955 a member of the Trentside chapter was refused a benefit, sued in the county court, and was settled with on the steps for his costs. The Clerk to the Instrument minuted that a body without a remedy of its own would keep ending up in a public one.

The drafting went to the assistant solicitor at the Brotherhood's Lincoln agents. She delivered it on 14 February 1957: thirty-one numbered paragraphs, about eleven hundred words, two forms. Four pages, amended once, in 1974, to change an address.

Paragraph 9 sets the test and it has two limbs. The decision must have been made otherwise than in accordance with the Instrument or a rule under it; and a different decision must have been open on the material before the decider.

Paragraph 11 says how you prove the first. You produce the decision, in writing.

Dr. Marguerite Enderby-Osafo, who works on domestic tribunals, read the text against forty-one comparable rulebooks without being told whose it was, and ranked its drafting second of forty-two.

One hundred and eighty-seven

From 1 May 1957 her own paragraph 22 made her Registrar of Appeals, at forty guineas a year. She was not a member and could not have been; the seats are hereditary and were then held by men.

Between 1957 and 1988 she received 187 applications and allowed none.

One hundred and eighteen failed at paragraph 11. Not on their merits — on the absence of a piece of paper. The chapters and the Fund refused people by telephone, at the door, through a steward; a body that never writes a decision down cannot have one produced against it.

Thirty-nine were out of time. Twenty-two were heard and dismissed. Eight were withdrawn.

That was not ordinary practice: the committee minute books we hold as PX-1920 cover the same years and record a reasoned decision every time.

Seventy-four pounds a quarter

Gerald Sowerby-Dansu of the Trentside chapter died in 1987, forty-one years in seat. Rule 14 of the Central Fund's standing orders gives such a member's widow a quarterly annuity.

The Fund refused Ivy Sowerby-Dansu on the ground that their 1979 marriage had never been entered in the chapter book — a notification Rule 14 requires of the member, not of his wife.

The refusal was given twice, by telephone.

In March 1989 Nnaji-Halcrow, sixty-five and a year retired, took the case for nothing and did what her own procedure required. She asked for the refusal in writing. Three letters went unanswered. The fourth enclosed draft county-court particulars, and on 2 June the Bursar wrote the refusal down in a single paragraph.

The appeal was lodged on 14 June, inside her twenty-eight days, and heard at Aldermere Hall on 9 October by a board of three under her paragraph 15. Her successor as Registrar, Douglas Wraithe-Petrie, administered her rules against her and says he enjoyed it.

On 21 November the board allowed the appeal on both limbs. Rule 14's condition bound the member, not his widow, and a different decision had been open to the Fund on the material before it.

Cheque 004119, £666, drawn on the Central Fund, cleared on 4 December 1989. The returned cheque is in her file.

Mrs Sowerby-Dansu drew the annuity until she died in 2003 — fifty-five quarters, £4,070. Her niece's bank books show £74 from the first payment to the last, never uprated.

Since

In 1990 the Fund adopted a standing form of written refusal, settled by counsel, the Bursar tells us, "with the procedure in mind". Paragraph 11 has defeated nothing since. The failure point moved to the second limb of paragraph 9.

There have been sixty-one applications since 1990 and none has been allowed.

The board that ruled this month that the Brotherhood's paramount office cannot be filled at all sat under her paragraph 15: three members and a clerk, exactly as she set it down at thirty-three.

Fourteen years late

She was widowed in 1998 and is survived by a daughter and two grandchildren. She left three box files to her executor with no instructions, and he had not opened the third. We wrote to him in May about something else.

On 11 August we asked to see the appeals register for 1989 to 2026 and were refused by telephone by a man who would not give his name. On 13 August we asked for that refusal in writing, under paragraph 11 of the procedure she settled in 1957.

Nothing has come back. It is the correct move and she taught it to us.