Robin Cavendish

Robin Francis Cavendish, MBE (12 March 1930 – 8 August 1994), was a British advocate for people with disability, medical aid developer, and one of the longest-lived responauts[a] in Britain.

Because he was paralysed from the neck down, a Nairobi doctor put him on a mechanical respirator that Cavendish needed to breathe, making him a "responaut".

[1] His findings were bleak, so he launched a campaign petitioning the health department to provide wheelchairs like his to free people with polio from iron lungs.

Most notable among these was the Possum, which Cavendish developed with scientists at Stoke Mandeville Hospital; it allowed users to use the telephone, turn on a television or adjust a home's central heating with only a left-or-right movement of their head.

Spencer, the consultant in charge of the Lane-Fox Unit at St Thomas's Hospital in London, co-founded the charity Refresh in 1970 to raise the money toward the construction of Netley Waterside House, a holiday complex overlooking Southampton Water on the South Coast whose facilities provided for the care of severely disabled responauts as they and their families enjoyed the attractive surroundings.

Cavendish and Diana refused to accept his condition as a major restriction, travelling widely until a short time before his death.

According to Alice and Tim Renton of The Independent, "Young people found him an irresistible ear to pour confidences into and his stimulating and down-to-earth attitude to problems helped many.

It was as if his sedentary life gave him a broader viewpoint and a sharper vision than the rest of us, and his capacity for laughing at, as well as with, his friends was healthily deflating.

"[1] Cavendish was described by the Rentons as "naturally unsentimental", with his love for Diana, Jonathan and daughter-in-law Leslie Ann Rogers both "well-concealed and totally evident".

"[1] Cavendish died on 8 August 1994 at Drayton St Leonard, Oxfordshire, England at the age of 64, notable as one of the longest-surviving responauts in Great Britain.