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Esther Gould

Posted by Andrew Gould (Sydney, Australia) on 8 August 2007 in People & Portraits and Portfolio.

This photograph of my mother was taken two years ago when she was 96.

My mother was born in 1909, and has had quite a remarkable life. She grew up in London in a time when the gas street lights had to be lit each night, and the crystal radio was the latest technology.

During the First World War she was evacuated from London due to the bombings, returning later, hardly able to read or write due to the disruption to her schooling. Nevertheless, she later won a scholarship to study at university, and was one of a handful of women at that time who were given a place in medicine.

My mother worked in various parts of England during the Second World War, often under difficult conditions, including driving at night to visit patients in the blackouts, which were due to the bombings. After the war was over, she set up in joint practice with my father in Leicester, where I was born.

We emigrated to Australia in 1958, and my mother practised medicine in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. She eventually retired at 78, and today at 98, still has a perfect memory of her whole past.

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Canon EOS 350D
1/30 second
F/5.6
ISO 1600
45 mm