Doris Lamb, my grandmother, was born on 18 June 1908, in Hull. I never met her. She had multiple sclerosis and died in her late thirties, when my mother was fourteen.
Doris was the eldest daughter of Martin James Lamb and Annie Higinbotham. She and her sisters weren't brought up by their parents, but by the two grandmothers. Doris went to Granny Higinbotham, and her two sisters to their step-grandmother Ann Jennison.
Despite being an intelligent girl, Doris, like other children of working-class families, didn't receive much of an education. She left school young, and worked for many years in the Needlers factory in Hull.
On 25 December (Christmas Day) 1930, Doris married Charles McGarry, at St Paul's Church, Sculcoates, Hull. At the time of their marriage and for some years afterwards, Doris Lamb and Charles McGarry lived in Ada's Terrace, off St Paul's Street. Through the 1930s they had four children, including my mother, the eldest. They lost one of their sons, Peter, at the age of four.
The family lived in Hull through World War Two, during which time the older children, including my mum, were evacuated to more rural areas. My mum has many memories of this - none of them happy ones. But her memories of her mother are all of a strong and capable woman, with high standards, who carried on caring and coping despite debilitating illness.
Doris endured multiple sclerosis for many years, and died on 9 April 1946, aged 37.
She had said that "They'll never find a cure in my lifetime". Sadly, it still hasn't been found. Fifty years after Doris's death, my sister Kay was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, in her thirties. She died in August 2001, aged 42.
Kay, born in the late 1950s, had more opportunity to fulfil her potential in the time she was given here, becoming a teacher, as my mother had wanted to be, and perhaps as Doris might have wanted to be, had women from poorer backgrounds had such opportunities then. Instead Doris put her energies and intelligence into raising her children and being a good mother, and held her family together, for as long as she was able.