Elizabeth Scattergood, social worker

A memorial service is planned in May for Elizabeth MacLeod Scattergood, 98, a retired social worker, who died Sunday, Jan. 17, of Alzheimer's disease at Kendal Crosslands in Kennett Square.

Mrs. Scattergood, known as "Betty," had been a longtime resident of Germantown.

Born in Nova Scotia, she graduated from high school in the Canadian province of New Brunswick before moving with her family to New York state. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1936 from Tusculum College in Tennessee and a master's degree in 1947 from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.

She was a licensed social worker, specializing in children, for many years before retiring in the early 1980s.

Although she came from a Presbyterian family, Mrs. Scattergood learned about the Society of Friends during her search for a faith that espoused pacifism. She became a member of the 57th Street Friends Meeting in Chicago.

While employed as a social worker at the Family Services Bureau in Chicago, Mrs. Scattergood found that her religious and professional lives had coalesced.

She signed on with the American Friends Service Committee, and in 1950 went to Ludwigshafen, West Germany, where she directed a neighborhood center as part of the post-World War II relief effort.

She transferred to Darmstadt to become administrative assistant to the Head of Germany Mission. There she met Roger Scattergood, a Philadelphia Quaker who was visiting the relief program.

After three years in Germany, she returned to the United States and settled in Philadelphia, because, she said, "I had such a warm feeling for Quakers."

In 1955, she joined the then-new Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute as a social work supervisor, later becoming head of the institute's department of social services for children.

She collaborated with Henri Parens on the 1977 book, Aggression in Our Children. The pair taught parenting skills to groups of new mothers - an effort that resulted in a curriculum for which Mrs. Scattergood wrote the lesson plans.

She married Roger Scattergood, a city planner, in 1958, and together they volunteered with the American Friends Service Committee and for the Germantown Monthly Meeting.

"Her kindness and generosity to family and friends was legendary," said niece Anne Fogg. She was especially close to her nieces and nephews, and to the family with whom she had lived during graduate school.

In 1988, she and her husband moved to Crosslands, where she organized a Sunday interfaith discussion group for residents unable to attend regular church services. Roger Scattergood died in 1995 at age 84.

Mrs. Scattergood enjoyed reading, writing, working on social and political issues, and traveling.

Besides her nieces and nephews, she is survived by a brother and a foster daughter.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 14, at Kendal Crosslands, 1660 East St., Kennett Square. She donated her body to science.

Contributions may be made to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia 19102, or the Germantown Monthly Meeting, 47 W. Coulter St., Philadelphia 19144.

bcook@phillynews.com

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