--- title: "Theodora Nnaji-Halcrow, 88, Wrote The Appeal Procedure And Won The Only Appeal." dek: "Her executor gave us three box files: the 1957 drafts, the 1989 ruling in favour of a member's widow, and the Central Fund's cheque for £666, which cleared on 4 December. Two hundred and forty-nine applications, one allowed." kind: obit (Obituary) desk: Shadow Governance author: Marcus Oyelaran (fictional) published: 2026-08-25T06:00:00Z url: https://theyburied.com/article/obit-theodora-nnaji-halcrow tags: Babylonian Brotherhood, David Icke, Central Fund, domestic tribunals, Lincolnshire, obituary genre: satire status: fiction — nothing in this story happened; every person, source and document is invented --- # Theodora Nnaji-Halcrow, 88, Wrote The Appeal Procedure And Won The Only Appeal. *Her executor gave us three box files: the 1957 drafts, the 1989 ruling in favour of a member's widow, and the Central Fund's cheque for £666, which cleared on 4 December. Two hundred and forty-nine applications, one allowed.* 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. > Paragraph 11 is in every rulebook of the period. What is not in every rulebook is an institution that never writes anything down. > > — Dr. Marguerite Enderby-Osafo > **Figure:** One procedure, sixty-nine years, 249 applications, one allowed — see https://theyburied.com/article/obit-theodora-nnaji-halcrow ## 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](/article/article-four-of-the-body) 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. ## Sources (invented) - Barnaby Quainton-Bell, Solicitor, Lincoln; her executor and the successor to her firm — Two meetings; released the Registrar's papers, three box files, 1956–1990, under a deed with no condition on what we published (June and July 2026) - Douglas Wraithe-Petrie, Registrar of Appeals, 1988–2001; her successor — Interviewed twice at his house near Sleaford and sent the full draft, the diagram and the figures to mark (July 2026) - Rosanne Kettleby, Niece of Ivy Sowerby-Dansu; kept her aunt's bank books — Interviewed at Grantham and shown the ruling and the cheque, neither of which she had seen (July 2026) - Dr. Marguerite Enderby-Osafo, Legal historian of domestic tribunals, Manchester — Given the 1957 text with the institution's name removed, alongside forty-one comparable rulebooks, and asked to rank the drafting (June–July 2026) - Ottoline Vasey-Adeagbo, Bursar of the Central Fund — Sent the full draft, the figures and the cheque on 6 August 2026 with no deadline; replied in writing over five pages (August 2026) ## Documents cited (invented) - PX-1920: https://theyburied.com/vault/PX-1920 ## What we could not confirm - The sixty-one applications since 1990. Wraithe-Petrie gives thirty-one for his own years and the Bursar gives sixty-one for the whole period, and two officers arriving at consistent figures is not the same as a register. We asked to inspect the appeals register on 11 August and were refused by telephone; on 13 August we asked for that refusal in writing, under paragraph 11 of her own procedure, and nothing has come back. - What the 118 were about. Her register records the applicant, the date and the paragraph they failed at, and nothing whatever about the underlying complaint. One hundred and eighteen people were refused something by a chapter or by the Fund between 1957 and 1988 and we do not know what. The chapters' own books would say. No chapter has opened one to us. - Whether the 1990 form of refusal was drafted to defeat the second limb of paragraph 9. The Bursar says counsel settled it 'with the procedure in mind', which is her phrase and not ours, and describes the effect without conceding the intention. We asked for the instructions to counsel and the opinion. The Fund says both are privileged. Privilege is theirs to waive and they have not waived it. ## Right of reply **Ottoline Vasey-Adeagbo, Bursar of the Central Fund** (Replied 19 August 2026, over five pages. Printed entire and unedited, including the parts about this newspaper and the paragraph we would rather she had not written.): > I did not know Mrs Nnaji-Halcrow. I was eleven when she stood down and I am not going to perform a grief I do not feel in order to soften what follows. > > Your obituary says she served this institution for thirty-one years. She invoiced it. She was a solicitor in private practice at our agents in Lincoln, she was retained at a fee, the fee was reviewed eleven times, and on nine of those occasions she asked for more and got it. That is not a criticism. It is a description, and it is the correct one, and you have chosen a warmer word because a warmer word suits the shape of the piece you wanted to write. > > On 1989 I will be plain, because your figures are right and there is no advantage to me in pretending otherwise. The board allowed the appeal. The Fund paid. The sum was six hundred and sixty-six pounds. The cost of defending a claim in the county court in that year, on the estimate our solicitors gave the Bursar of the day and which is in our file as it is presumably in hers, was between nine hundred and fourteen hundred pounds. You may draw from that whatever conclusion you like, and I expect you will draw the least generous one, but a fund that spends fourteen hundred pounds to avoid paying six hundred and sixty-six is not being principled. It is being stupid with money that belongs to widows. > > You write that the ruling stands as a precedent. It does not, and paragraph 27 of the very instrument you are admiring says so: every appeal is determined upon its own facts and no determination binds a subsequent board. She wrote that paragraph. She wrote it in 1957, at thirty-three, in the same four pages you are calling the best thing this institution possesses, and she wrote it knowing exactly what it does. > > As to the form of refusal adopted in 1990. Counsel settled it with the procedure in mind. Of course he did. What else would he have had in mind? The purpose of the form is that a decision of the Fund should state the rule it is made under and the material it is made upon, so that anyone minded to appeal can see both. Your paragraph describing this reads as though we had built a trap. We had, on the contrary, done precisely what the woman you are eulogising spent thirty-one years telling us to do, and which we would not do while she was asking. The applications since have been considered, they have been answered in writing, and the outcome has not changed. We regard that as vindication. You will regard it as something else and you have the space to say so. > > I come now to the part I imagine you will quote. Your reporter telephoned this hall on 11 August and asked a member of the domestic staff for sight of the appeals register. The register is not a public document, it names living people who have asked this Fund for money, and the answer was going to be no from whoever picked up the telephone. Your reporter then wrote asking for that refusal in writing, under paragraph 11, and I am told that this newspaper regards the manoeuvre as elegant. I regard it as a trick, and I will not put a refusal in writing merely because a dead woman's rule would make it convenient for you to have one. > > And since you have raised the annuity: it was seventy-four pounds a quarter, it was never uprated, and I have looked to see why. Rule 14 contains no provision for uprating. It has contained none since 1911. The person best placed in the whole of the last century to have noticed that omission and drafted around it was retained by us for thirty-one years, was paid to read our rules, and did not. > > You have made a heroine of a woman who turned away one hundred and eighty-seven people, some of them, on your own account, in real need, and who was paid a retainer for doing it. If the procedure is a trap then she set it and then she kept it for three decades, and the single occasion on which she sprang it was the one where she was on the other side. You cannot have the saint and the mechanism. Choose. > > One correction and one concession. The correction: she was never an officer of the Brotherhood and your headline implies she was. The concession: the procedure is four pages long, it is the most competent document this institution possesses, and nobody here has improved on it in sixty-nine years. That is the compliment. I am not going to pay her another. --- They Buried is a satirical newspaper. Every story, source, document and person in it is invented. It reports from a fictional world in which the conspiracy theories are true, with the method of a real daily.