Sheila Scott

February 23, 1930 - April 26, 2006

Author and historian

Apart from a year when she was evacuated to Edinburgh during the war, Sheila Scott's education was in the south at Sutton High School, but she graduated from Edinburgh University before teaching in Israel for several years.

When in the fortunate position of giving up teaching, for which she had little enthusiasm, she came north, where her family had roots, first to Edinburgh, then to Peebles and finally to Biggar, devoting herself to local history and family research.

She took on the recording of old gravestones in Peeblesshire, Lanarkshire and at Lower Calton, Edinburgh, for the Scottish Genealogical Society.

Efforts to commemorate the bicentenary of the birth of Mungo Park, African explorer and former resident of Peebles, interested her and the achievement of the mounting of the bronze plaque now on his house in the Northgate gave her much satisfaction indeed.

Sheila was instrumental in setting up the John Buchan Centre at Broughton in the old Free Kirk where his father had preached. For that, she laboured tirelessly. As a trustee, she continued her research, producing useful pamphlets on local life.

She never married and is survived by her sister, nephews and nieces.

Phyllis King

August 23, 1905 - January 27, 2006

Hard-hitting ladies doubles champion at Wimbledon in 1931

PHYLLIS KING was a hard hitting tennis player whose crowning achievement was winning the 1931 Wimbledon ladies doubles title in one of the great upsets of the championships. The unseeded Phyllis Mudford, as she was then, and Dorothy Shepherd-Barron reached the final after relatively easy wins in the early rounds but a hard-fought semi-final. In the other half of the draw were the fourth seeds, Doris Metaxa, of France, and Josane Sigart, of Belgium, who had to play their semi-final on the same day as the final. After a tough match, including a 14-game middle set, the seeded pair were through and had a break during the men’s doubles finals before having to return to court to face the British pair.

The higher-ranking pair got off to a shaky start but won the first set 6-3. However, this seemed only to inspire Mudford and Shepherd-Barron, who took the second set 6-3. The Englishwomen continued to dominate into the third set but then their opponents drew level.

The thrilling climax to the match “resolved itself into a driving battle between Miss Mudford and Mlle Metaxa . . . but when the British ladies got ahead again there was no holding them, and they went on to win”, according to The Times. They took the final set 6-4. The report also noted that during the deciding set “Mrs Shepherd-Barron (was) mostly a spectator . . . and the credit for the victory must surely be (Miss Mudford’s)”.

The prize was a £10 shopping voucher which the championship rules stipulated had to be spent on a luxury item and not “domestic necessity”. Phyllis Mudford celebrated by going to dinner at the Savoy with her future husband, Maurice King, a neighbour since childhood and son of the local doctor. They were married in April 1932 in a service conducted by the bride’s cousin.

Phyllis Evelyn Mudford was born in 1905 in Wallington, Surrey. Her father was a commercial marine underwriter and she was educated at Sutton High School, where she was captain of tennis. After leaving school she became a regular at the Horley Lawn Tennis Club and, at the age of 20, started playing on the amateur circuit.

By 1929 she was making steady progress against some of the stars of the game at The Queen’s Club, Kensington, and won the London Covered Court Championships ladies singles title in 1930. This brought her to the attention of the Lawn Tennis Association, which invited her to play overseas, with travelling expenses paid for by the LTA.

A highlight of the tennis calendar at the time was the Wightman Cup between the British and American women’s teams. King was picked for the victorious British Wightman Cup team in 1930 and played again several times over the decade, being appointed captain in 1938. The cup changed hands several times in the early years of the competition but the decline of the women’s game in Britain and its growth in the US made it so one-sided as to become meaningless and it was discontinued in 1989.

King was never to repeat her Wimbledon success, and her best result in the singles competition was getting to the quarter finals in 1931. Although never destined to be one of the game’s stars, her consistent baseline game and ability to play comfortably on both sides of the court won her modest achievements at several competitions, both in Britain and abroad and she was ranked seventh in the world. She reached the semi-finals of the US Championships in 1931 and 1935 and won the ladies’ singles title at The Queen’s Club in 1933 and 1934, reaching the finals in 1937. At one point she accumulated enough money out of the vouchers she had won to buy a car.

King probably would have won more titles had war not intervened. During the Second World War she took part in exhibition matches at which entrance fees were donated to the Red Cross. One of these was to be held at the Horley Lawn Tennis Club where King had honed her game, but had to be switched to the nearby bowls club because it had a superior playing surface.

After the war she continued playing tennis, as much for the enjoyment as for competition, and made her final appearance at Wimbledon in 1953, shortly before her 48th birthday.

King played socially into her early nineties and, while looking back fondly at a time when top-class tennis was played for enjoyment and opponents were regarded as friends, was an avid and knowledgeable follower of the modern game.

Until a month before she died, King was still living in the Surrey village house she moved into with her husband in 1934. He died in 1959 of emphysema, aged 62. They had no children.

Phyllis King, tennis player, was born on August 23, 1905. She died on January 27, 2006, aged 100.

The Times                     February 02, 2006