Sylvia Ann Leader (21 Nov 1943 - 13 Sep 2026)

In loving memory of Sylvia Ann Leader (nee Ross), who sadly passed away on 13th September 2026, aged 82.

Born in Edinburgh in 1943 to John Ross and May Dolan, but brought to Chatham at the age of three by her father, who had become estranged from her mother. Following his wartime career as an able seaman in the Royal Navy, he had come to work in the post-war redevelopment of naval Sheerness, eventually becoming a foreman on the reconstruction of the Sheerness seawall. In divorcing her mother in 1947 and migrating away as far as he could from Edinburgh, he took away any chance of Sylvia having a relationship with her brothers, sisters, and mother. This void was defining for her self-identity and personality throughout her life.

Despite not knowing her immediate family (some died in childhood, some emigrated within the Commonwealth, and her mother died in 1970), in her adulthood she did maintain loving relationships with her aunts, Beatrice and Christina, and would visit them in Edinburgh, until their deaths in the mid-1990s. Although she never lived in Scotland after she left aged three, she was a staunch Scot throughout her life; she sang Flower of Scotland with the same zeal as William Wallace would have, and drinks would be toasted with a resounding Slange Var!

Growing up in Chatham was not easy for Sylvia. Her father married again in 1952, merging Sylvia with older stepsiblings and a stepmother who treated her badly. Within the Clayton family she endured abuse as a child, was treated as an outcast, and didn’t complete her education, instead, being forced to work in the fields. For those that knew her, this was a very sad start in life, as in adulthood she was known to be an intelligent, smart and articulate person, and could have achieved a strong career if only she had been given the chance.

In her late teens, she managed to escape this drudgery by going to live on the Jamaica Road in Bermondsey. Her fondness for these years of her life became regularly apparent. She worked in a cafe, living above it. Tommy Steele, the famous rock’n’roller of the late 1950s, would sometimes throw pebbles up to her window and ask her to open the cafe after one of his late nights partying.

Back in the Medway Towns, she met David in the early 1960s, and they enjoyed their courtship before marrying in 1968. At that point, he was not long out of chiropody school and had set up his own surgery along the Banks in Rochester. The Banks were to become a feature in her life; for a considerable time she had a career as a lithographer, working for Tommy Voges (one of the McIndoe Guinea Pigs, who had horrific facial burns) in his print works in the Banks, which by all accounts provided fascinating work preparing and copying historical documentation - a man and a career she very fondly recalled.

Before that, though, hardship visited upon Sylvia again in the mid-1960s, when she was not far into her twenties, developing lung cancer. Today, treating lung cancer is difficult enough, but this happened in the pioneering days of cancer treatment. Under the care of specialist surgeon Dr Gołębiowski at Preston Hall in Aylesford, she underwent life-threatening surgery to remove two lobes of her right lung and a reconstruction of the affected bronchus. She was clinically dead on the operating table for something like eight minutes whilst the surgical team tried to resuscitate their young patient. Before accounts of near-death experiences became widely known, she told them that she had watched them frantically trying to save her from the ceiling of the operating theatre, before then being drawn towards a bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel, with voices calling her name. As she reached the light, a voice said to her ‘it’s not your time’, and then she was back in her body. She then had to endure months lying still and confined in an iron lung and then on a traction table. Thankfully, there was no recurrence, however, it left her with permanent breathing difficulties as she aged, susceptible to bronchitis, and living with emphysema and asthma.

David and Sylvia lived in Ordnance Street, Chatham, before moving to their forever-home in City Way, Rochester, in 1978. A large house and a large garden needed to be filled by children. There were initial struggles conceiving and carrying pregnancies, and the greatest blow was the loss of their first son (their sixth pregnancy), whose heart defect meant he survived for just 19 days in 1981. However, joy followed with Ross in 1982 and Zelda in 1985.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, caring for her father became a feature in her life. He was an alcoholic through much of his life, possibly contributing to the dementia he developed, and several injurious falls inside and outside his council flat in Maidstone led to him being put in a care home in the Brompton, Gillingham, until his death in 1995.

Whilst motherhood had curtailed her career in lithography, and David’s established and busy career as a self-employed chiropodist meant she could be a full-time housewife, it wasn’t the end of her working life. Once her children were into school, for several years she got up before dawn to do the opening shift at a cafe on the Banks, called the Bridge Roll. Her kind nature and generosity played out there with her providing daily hot food and drinks to a number of homeless men before the regular paying punters arrived. Later, in her 50s and early 60s, she worked as a cleaner in the science department of Thomas Aveling secondary school, again getting up before dawn.

Sylvia was a well-known face in the Medway Towns during the middle of her life, visiting the Chatham and Rochester High Streets on an almost daily basis. She held a pleasant conversation, and would often be stopped many times during any visit. Her favourite pastimes were to browse in the antique and charity shops, in which again she was a well-known character. However, she was never able to resist buying things she didn’t really need, something of a magpie. The house became full of antiques and bric-a-brac; eventually a terror to her family, who were unable to open the door into a particular room because even the floor was brimming with her collection.

The family much later realised this was a psychological condition known as ‘hoarding’, and this addiction went hand-in-hand with the greatest defining trouble of her life - alcoholism. Through the first half of her life, she was almost teetotal, refusing to become like her father. But that changed in the late 1980s, when she discovered gin & tonic. The family were never able to be sure of what the final trigger was, but surely turning to alcohol was a culmination of many psychological harms throughout her life, along with an hereditary element.

In 1993, social services placed her in a rehabilitation unit run by nuns, in Iden Manor located just outside Staplehurst. She spent half a year in that institution, during which she bonded with several people, held herself up to the Twelve Steps, volunteered for tasks, and became interested in normal life again. Though the extent of drunkenness was ameliorated, unfortunately she quickly relapsed and was never again able to stay off alcohol by herself for a long period. She did become adept at publicly masking and hiding the various effects of alcoholism, though behind closed doors the home environment was very turbulent. Yet, David stuck by Sylvia, and whilst Ross and Zelda had to grow up quicker than most, school provided respite and they managed to get through their education unhindered. It also created the conditions for a remarkably liberal upbringing, which saw Ross and Zelda frequently have friends stay over and get up to antics, the fun freedom which their friends fondly remember Sylvia for.

Her love for others didn’t extend only to people; a mainstay in her life was the multitude of pets she cared for. Most notably remembered by her were cats Friend and Titsie, with their black labrador Shadow (following her around as her namesake) living until the grand age of 20, when she herself was not yet 50. Over the years, she befriended a series of stray cats that had been born on the neighbouring airfield, with them eventually trusting her enough to become house cats.

In later life and their retirement, with their children grown up and into their twenties, life was beginning to stabilise and they were rekindling their love and life as a couple after many challenging years. Sadly, before long David’s memory began to falter, eventually becoming diagnosed with Alzheimer’s the year Sylvia turned 70. The following year, Sylvia also received a diagnosis of vascular dementia. She was also due a full hip replacement, as osteoarthritis in all her leg joints was becoming debilitatingly painful, particularly in that left hip. However, she was unable to have the surgery, as her pre-op evaluation revealed significant liver cirrhosis, caused by all the years of alcohol abuse. With all these realisations, Ross and Zelda were then able to control their living conditions to help save her from herself.

Sadly, the interventions didn’t come soon enough for Sylvia’s health, and alongside many other ailments she acquired, the dementia and arthritis led to her becoming bedbound in 2020. She later developed contractures at the knee, making her care very difficult to provide. Eventually, after considerable lobbying of the local NHS Trust, in October 2025 she was approved to undergo life-threatening surgery for the second time in her life; removal of the left hip, and the contracted tendons of the knee and groin were severed to release her legs. Despite the odds, she recovered well for a few weeks, although complications arising from the condition of her liver became evident, requiring her to return to hospital for four more weeks. Her liver needed the constant support of medication to balance the fluid in her body. The heatwave of summer 2026 appears to have disturbed the balance, and in July she was again admitted to hospital for a week of intensive support of her liver. Whilst she recovered well enough to be discharged, her decline was noticeable, and in September her liver finally decompensated, leading to her death.

The remarkable thing, despite an awful existence in her final years, was her ability to show her genuine and warm smile whenever someone entered the room. Although she was at times very difficult to deal with because of her conditions, she was a favourite of the Bee’s Care Agency staff, who visited her at home four times each day to support her health and wellbeing.

Widowed after 56 years of marriage, she outlived her husband by two years. Sylvia had the joy of knowing her children became married, and that she had become a grandmother to Ross’ son Rex and Zelda’s son Zayden.

The long and complex tapestry of a life fought hard for. A survivor.

Charity donations:

Much of Mum’s psychological and emotional turmoil stemmed from the loss of pregnancies and the baby she lost. Petals is a charity which provides counselling to parents who have lost, with a focus on those who cannot easily access such important services, and specifically to help those whose bereavement is causing mental health problems. Dementia also significantly affected her life, from dealing with her father’s and later her own husband’s dementia, before becoming directly affected herself (thankfully, she left before it took away all her memories and personality). She would be warmed to know that her friends chose to donate to causes fighting to reduce the impact of these issues on people’s lives. So, we respectfully and gratefully ask that, instead of sending flowers, you donate to Petals and Race Against Dementia (links provided on this page).