MARJE Proops, who died last night in a London hospital, was the doyenne of agony aunts whose career spanned the most rapid evolution of moral values in Britain since Victorian times.
When she became an agony aunt in 1954, problem pages asked correspondents to send stamped addressed envelopes for "special advice".
By the permissive sixties her column was openly advising young girls on contraception and abortion and young men about their sexual inadequacies.
Columns reflected changes in society, from alcoholic brutes battering their wives and children to people frightened of HIV.
In 1994, she and other problem page writers handed in a letter to 10, Downing Street calling for the age of consent for homosexual males to be reduced to 16.
She said at the time: "As the law stands I cannot give any homosexuals under the age of 21 (as it was then) any advice because their activity is illegal. I see nothing wrong in 16 year old youths expressing their sexuality with people they love. At 16, girls and boys know their sexuality."
Her age was closely guarded, but it is known she was born Rebecca Rayle around the First World War. Anti Semitic abuse in Hoxton, where she grew up, made her change the name to Marjorie.