"My grandparents and some of their siblings came to England from Lithuania and Poland in the 1880s and 1890s. They spoke no English but both my grandfathers went to night school and learned to read and write. My grandmothers both spoke very poor English and were illiterate in the language all their lives. My maternal grandparents settled in Sheffield at first but grandfather caught tuberculosis from the terrible conditions in which they lived and worked and died in 1910 leaving my grandmother a widow without skills or communication outside her own community and 3 small children. She and they moved to Leeds to be nearer family and grandma made a precarious and physically very difficult living selling poultry. Although illiterate her respect for education was enormous and both her sons went to university. She lived with us when I was a child and from her I learned Yiddish as well as the enduring thought that 'Shirley will be a doctor' - the ultimate in educational achievement as far as she was concerned. Her idea was that if by some mischance I were to find myself in her situation I would 'have a good trade' to fall back on. I would not have to struggle as she did. So I did become a doctor and was already in a senior post when my first husband died very suddenly in his early forties. It was almost as though my whole life had been spent in preparation for that moment through grandma's foresight."