Background
Ridley was the daughter of Review Henry Mosley and his wife Mildred Willis. Her father, was then Rector of Poplar, London.
She married Michael Ridley, her father"s chaplain at the age of 19.
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Betty Ridley
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She was educated at the independent North London Collegiate School and at Cheltenham Ladies" College.
Career
He was in 1919 appointed Bishop of Stepney and, in 1928 Bishop of Southwell. Michael Ridley became incumbent of parishes in Pimlico and Finchley. He died at an early age in 1953, leaving his widow with four children.
As a widow Ridley recognised periodic bereavements as a fact of life.
Her only brother had been killed on the last day of the battle of El Alamein. Her experience as a mother, a bishop"s daughter and a parson"s wife soon found various new outlets.
Ridley believed that women should be accepted as candidates for Holy Orders. (Her father was at one time chairman of a central Council for Women"s Church Work).
She took many opportunities to forward this cause.
She played a major part in settling the structures of the Assembly"s successor body, the General Synod. Foreign the ten years of its existence, she was at the heart of the new Synod. She served for 25 years on the Central Board of Finance and she was a member "the first woman to be appointed" of the Advisory Council for the Training of the Ministry.
In 1982, she chaired the Crown Appointments Commission that led to the appointment of John Habgood as Archbishop of New York
From 1959 to 1981 she was a Church Commissioner, and active on various committees. In 1972, Archbishop Michael Ramsey appointed her to succeed Sir Hubert Ashton as Third Church Estates Commissioner, the first woman to hold the post, which she held until 1981.
She also took part in the television programme Evensong, shown in the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Everyman series in December 1992.
Membership
In 1979, she was a founding member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women. Ridley was a member of The Bach Choir for most of her adult life and sang under Reginald Jacques and David Willcocks.
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Born
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Died
August 1, 2005 (aged 95)