Robin Cavendish
| Robin Cavendish | |
|---|---|
| Born |
12 March 1930 Middleton, Derbyshire, England |
| Died | 8 August 1994 (aged 64) Drayton St Leonard, Oxfordshire, England |
| Occupation | Advocate for the disabled Developer of medical aids for paralysed people |
| Spouse(s) | Diana Blacker (1957) |
| Children | 1 |
Robin Francis Cavendish (12 March 1930 – 8 August 1994), was a British advocate for the disabled, medical aid developer, and one of the longest-lived responauts in Britain. Born in Middleton, Derbyshire, Cavendish was affected by polio at the age of 28. Despite being initially given only three months to live, Cavendish, paralysed from the neck down and able to breathe only with the use of a mechanical ventilator, became a tireless advocate for the disabled, instrumental in organising the first records of the number of responauts in Britain and helping to develop numerous devices to provide independence to the paralysed.
Robin Francis Cavendish was born 12 March 1930 in Middleton, Derbyshire, England. He attended Winchester College. He attended Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the 60th Rifles, of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, spending seven years in the Army, eventually attaining the rank of Captain. He left the Army to join Thompson Smithett in starting up a tea-broking business in Africa. In 1957, he married Diana Blacker and returned to Kenya. They had one son,Jonathan Cavendish.
Cavendish was awarded the MBE in 1974.
In December 1958, while in Kenya, Cavendish became ill with polio. Paralysed from the neck down, a Nairobi doctor put him on a mechanical respirator that Cavendish needed to breathe, making him a "responaut". Cavendish flew back to England. He was initially given only three months, and then one year, to live. According to Jonathan Cavendish, his father's first thought after being struck down by polio was to "turn off the machine", reasoning that Diana was only 25, and telling her, "You can start again." But, as Jonathan states, "she wasn't having any of it." Against the advice of his doctors, he left the hospital after a year.
For the remainder of his life, Cavendish and his wife worked not only to improve the quality of his life, but the lives of other paralysed people, traveling the world to inspire others as campaigners for the disabled. Cavendish would often serve as the expert who explained his condition to consultants and nurses. In the 1960s he tracked down and listed the circumstances of all the responauts in Britain, compiling the first record of how many people were confined to iron lungs.
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