The London solicitor Michael Baron, who has died aged 96, was instrumental in changing the lives of autistic people for the better. At a time when autism was little known or understood, in 1962 he co-founded the UK’s leading autistic charity. As its first chair, he was the driving force in publicising the condition and raising funds.
He helped set up the world’s first autism-specific school in 1965 and the first residential community for autistic adults in 1974. As one of a group of lawyers, he campaigned for the Education (Handicapped Children) Act in 1970, which gave all children, regardless of disability, the right to an education.
Baron was impelled into activism by the plight of his son Timothy. Born in 1956, as a toddler Timothy had little to no speech and an aloofness that set him apart from other children as well as behavioural problems. One paediatrician whom Baron saw was familiar with the work of the American doctor Leo Kanner and thought Timothy had a condition that was virtually unknown in the UK: autism.
Kanner had described “classic autistic syndrome” in 1943, saying it was characterised by “a powerful desire for aloneness and sameness” a description that seemed to chime with Timothy’s behaviour. However, with zero provision for such children apart from psychiatric institutions, the outlook seemed bleak.
Baron instinctively knew his son had a different way of looking at the world from other people and could not make sense of things or communicate what he needed. He was adamant that Timothy did not have a medical illness and nor was he “ineducable” as some doctors said. He was convinced that in the right educational setting Timothy could learn.
Wanting to find out about autism, Baron joined the National Society for Mentally Handicapped Children (the name for Mencap at the time). At a conference in 1961 he met other parents including fortuitously a young psychiatrist, Lorna Wing, who was familiar with Kanner’s work and also had an autistic child.
Keen to create an autism-specific charity, in January 1962, Baron, Wing and several other parents of autistic children met up for the first time. They initially called it the “Society for Psychotic Children” because so few in the UK understood the word “autism”, but Baron persuaded them it should be the National Society for Autistic Children. Later it became clear that autism does not stop at childhood and the society broadened its scope, changing its name in 1975 to the National Autistic Society (NAS).
In the early 1960s Baron and Wing heard of a talented Montessori teacher, Sybil Elgar, who was teaching young children with learning disabilities in her home and had developed a structured approach to help them learn. They persuaded her to work with them.
Baron found premises in Ealing, west London, and in 1965 what would become known as the Sybil Elgar school opened with Timothy and Wing’s daughter, Susan, as two of its first pupils. Through Baron’s networking and articles in the media, public awareness of autism was growing, helped considerably one afternoon by a visit to the school by the Beatles, and John Lennon writing them a cheque for £1,000.
Timothy spent his secondary school years in a boarding school in Northern Ireland, and as he approached 18, Baron worried about his future and that of other autistic adults who needed lifelong support. He discovered a large property for sale near Brent Knoll in Somerset and through the NAS raised funds, arranged its purchase and converted the house to have suitable accommodation for 21 residents. In 1974, Somerset Court, the world’s first autism-specific residential community opened, with Elgar as its first principal. Timothy was one of the first residents.
Over the decades, as autism was understood as a spectrum and an ever-wider number of people were diagnosed with it, Baron was concerned that vulnerable people like his son might get lost as NAS and society at large focused on the needs of higher-functioning autistic people. As Timothy and his contemporaries aged, it opened his eyes to the health and welfare needs of older severely autistic adults. In his 80s and 90s Baron campaigned for more learning disability nurses in the NHS and a wider understanding of welfare deputies, who could support disabled people if their family members were no longer around.
In 1980 Baron was made an MBE for his services to autism. Speaking about him and his contemporaries in the 60s, Carol Povey, a former director of the Centre for Autism at NAS, said: “That first generation of parents were formidable – a force of nature. They were admirable, fierce and so skilled at making change happen.”
Born in Willesden, north-west London, Michael was the second son of Herbert, a lawyer, and Lily (nee Moses), a doctor. As well as his brother, Ronald, he had a younger sister, Margaret. From Westminster school, in 1948 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study history.
After graduating in 1951, Baron took the Law Society exams, became a solicitor in his father’s firm, and then set up his own offices in Twickenham, south-west London. He met Mie Wadsted, a Danish student who had come to London to improve her English, and they married in 1956. They had Timothy shortly afterwards, followed by two girls, Joanna and Saskia.
Baron’s marriage ended in divorce in 1977, and three years later he married Hetty Thieme, a social worker. He sold his London firm in 1990 and the couple fulfilled a dream to move to the Lake District. There he became involved in a campaign to prevent the poor disposal of nuclear waste and took a passionate interest in local fauna such as bats and red squirrels. He had enjoyed literature and poetry all his life and helped to set up the literary festival Words by the Water in Keswick, Cumbria. Towards the end of his life, in 2023, he took huge pride in seeing the publication of his poetry anthology The Gingko Tree and Other Poems.
In 2012 Hetty died and Baron moved back to London, living latterly with his daughter Saskia, a documentary film-maker, who in 2003 made The Autism Puzzle for the BBC.
His other daughter, Joanna, died in 2025. He is survived by Timothy, Saskia, his grandson, Jacob, and his sister, Margaret.
• Michael Geoffrey Baron, autism campaigner, born 25 December 1928; died 16 November 2025
