Anne Florence Bussey, 1938–2019

Bob Allder has passed on the sad news that Anne died in 2019. She joined HMSO as Administrative Officer in 1979 and had worked in Parliamentary Press. This notice appeared in The Gazette.

Bob writes: I worked with Miss Anne Bussey at the Parliamentary Press. At one time she was the Industrial Nurse at Harrow Press. When the number of employees at Harrow fell below the statutory requirement of retaining an industrial nurse, she was re-deployed as a clerical officer at the Parliamentary Press. One of her duties was to look after the stationery cupboard. Woe betide anyone caught helping themselves from the said cupboard, and in this respect, she was very good at her job. I fell foul of her on more than one occasion. In fact, she used to frighten the living daylights out of me whenever I got caught helping myself!

Anne was at one time the Matron at St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School and worked with Barry Rose, OBE when he was the Director of Music at St. Paul’s (1974-84). As it was a boarding school, Anne mentioned to me that one of the things she often had to do was to go out looking for some of the new entrants at the school who had run away. When I was the organist & choirmaster at St Peter’s Church, Aldborough Hatch, Ilford we had the licensing service for the new incumbent Rev Kate Lovesey. The service was conducted by the Archdeacon of West Ham the Venerable Elwin Wesley Crockett.

Now I knew that Elwin had been a chorister himself at St Paul’s Cathedral, and yes when I asked him if he knew Anne, he did indeed and spoke very highly of her. To me, Anne was the epitome of Miss Ewell in the television comedy series “Please Sir!” (1968-72) not only in looks and speech, but of mannerisms too.