Stella Mason

Papers and diaries of Stella Mason, speech therapist. The diaries cover the period from Stella Mason's childhood as the daughter of a progressive Headmaster at Buxton College, her early interest in drama, her enrolment at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in 1938, her increasing interest and specialisation in speech therapy whilst at the School and the early days of her professional practice at first in Yorkshire and then in the Midlands in the late 1940s and 1950s. Mason originally trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London (one of the first UK institutions to offer courses in speech therapy) under the legendary founder of the school Elsie Fogerty (1865-1945). The diaries reference Mason and Fogerty's relationship, as well as her experience of lecturers including Joan van Thal and Clifford Turner.

Papers collected and created by Stella Mason, the bulk of which relate to the work of Leopold Stein, including off-prints, lectures and articles by Stein, photographs and personalia from Stein, and related correspondence and papers. Also includes some records relating to Stella Mason's work, including her clinical notes, subject / reference files, and a manuscript by Stella Mason, “Stein’s Theory of Stammering”.

4 boxes

The records have been kept in their original order and have been arranged to reflect the original filing system as far as possible.

Acc 2469: Acquired as part of a manuscript purchase of Leopold Stein's papers. Acc 2653: Further papers relating to Stella Mason and Leopold Stein, transferred in 2022.

Stella Mason (b. 28 September 1920, died 2016) was raised in Buxton, where her father was head teacher of The College, Buxton, between 1923 and 1944. Her parents had wished for her to attend Girton College, Cambridge, but she was more interested in speech and drama. Stella Mason had hoped to go to RADA, before enrolling to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London, between 1938 and 1941. Classes included voice, phonetics, diction, physics, French and Greek dancing, with practical work in the stage, teaching and speech therapy. On qualification she became a speech therapist, possibly working firstly in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire and subsequently from 1945 in the west Midlands, making her home in Birmingham.

She was active in the College of Speech Therapists, editing the News Bulletin of that organisation from June 1957 to May 1959. She was a close associate of Dr Leopold Stein, an Austrian physician, speech therapist and psychotherapist who came to England as a refugee in 1938 and she was heavily influenced by his psychoanalytical approach to speech disorders. She organised a College of Speech Therapists conference in 1962 at Stein's suggestion and edited the papers into a book Signs, Signals and Symbols, published in 1963. This book claimed to delineate the British approach to speech therapy, although it raised concern amongst senior members of the profession, who espoused alternative therapeutic approaches.

It appears that at least later in Leopold Stein's life, Mason and Stein lived together: his death certificate gives his address as that of Stella Mason. On his death it appears that Stein left a widow, Mary, nee Williams. Stella was still known as Mason as late as 1986, however at some point, possibly after that date she adopted the name 'Stein' and her death certificate suggests she was Leopold Stein's widow. Due to the lack of clarity around this, her name is given as Stella Mason in the catalogue.

PP/LST: Papers of Leopold Stein, speech therapist.

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy (RCSLT) archive is held at the University of Strathclyde: https://guides.lib.strath.ac.uk/SLT/archives.

Transferred to Wellcome.

This collection has been catalogued and is available to library members. Some items have access restrictions which are explained in the item-level catalogue records.

Not expected.

Transferred to Wellcome via researcher Jois Stansfield. Jois obtained the papers in February 2022 via the solicitors acting as executors for Stella Mason's estate, who had held the papers since Stella Mason's death in 2016.