Cathy Al­lum, the wid­ow of Desmond Al­lum, SC, has died. Al­lum was a co-founder, along with her hus­band, of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion the Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion. Al­i­son Hamel-Smith, chair of the foun­da­tion's board of di­rec­tors, said Al­lum con­tin­ued to work close­ly with the or­gan­i­sa­tion un­til a month ago, when she be­came ill. How­ev­er, she said, the news of Al­lum's death on Mon­day was shock­ing.

Hamel-Smith de­scribed Al­lum as an "ex­treme­ly gen­er­ous la­dy" who worked tire­less­ly for the Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion and nu­mer­ous oth­er char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions. Al­lum is sur­vived by three chil­dren, Tara, Jamie and Siob­han. They could not be reached yes­ter­day for com­ment. Desmond Al­lum, a promi­nent at­tor­ney, died in 2010 of can­cer-re­lat­ed com­pli­ca­tions.