Posted - June 01, 2012
Jean who lived in Great Clarendon Street, died peacefully on the 10th of March aged 72 from kidney failure. She was born in 1929 in Finchley, the middle of three sisters. During the war she was evacuated to Cardiff. After the war she left school, where she had been head girl and went to work as a medical secretary in University College Hospital. Although she was unable to have children of her own, Jean cared for generations of children. Her first charge was her younger sister Margaret, since their mother was in poor health.
When Margaret married, Jean lived with Margaret’s family and looked after her children, Dan and Will. She moved with them to Oxford in 1972, first to Sanford-on-Thames then to Holywell Street. Here she continued her career at the Radcliffe Infirmary and later at the School of Pathology. In 1973 she met her husband John, a hallman at Merton College, when they were both volunteers for St. John Ambulance. They married in 1975 and lived in Manor Place. Jean then worked part time as a child minder for 20 years. When John retired in 1997 they moved to a flat in Great Clarendon Street. She and John became stalwarts of the over-60s club at Grantham House where she ran the raffle until her health began to fail. She was diabetic and encouraged her friends to support the British Diabetic Association. Dan and Will carried her coffin.
