A life of fighting for the community and those in need
TRIBUTE Stairway to Heaven memorial
her extraordinary life. She died in January 2018, aged 102, four weeks after the unveiling of a Stairway to Heaven memorial to the lives lost at Bethnal Green Underground.
Yet her achievement in being one of a handful of women to complete her medical training in wartime was just the beginning.
After the war, Joan became a doctor dedicated to serving those who needed her care most.
She was given responsibility for the care of disabled children in Kensington and worked tirelessly to immunise them against unnecessary childhood diseases.
Joan made it her business to go into slums and get families rehoused and fight for the living standards of the poor.
Along the way, her dogged work has rightly earned her prestigious accolades and she was appointed MBE in 1985.
Shortly before her death, Dr Joan took food and clothing to survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire, because impoverished North Kensington was her patch as a doctor for many years; a place
where she worked tirelessly to dispense health and healing. Witnessing so much destruction among people she loved was almost unbearable.
“People are so selfish these days, and only think of themselves,” she said after her visit. “We have lost the culture of volunteering. Those that lived through the war understand the need for self-sacrifice and pulling together.
“How is society organising itself to help weaker members?” The wartime doctor also held strong views on modern women. “The
Beatty, circled, at a march and, inset, today problem with women today is that they labour under the illusion that they can have it all,” she told me, six months before her death.
“I sacrificed a personal life to become a doctor. I never dreamt I could marry and have a career. It was one or the other. Somewhere BORN in the seventh month of 1917, at 101 Beatty Orwell is the oldest woman in the book, but still possesses a razor-sharp mind.
Growing up in the Jewish Quarter around Petticoat Lane, she cannot remember a time when she was not political.
Forced to defend herself against violent Blackshirts, she joined anti-fascists at the age of 19 and was among the 250,000-strong crowd who defended their streets at what became known as the Battle of Cable Street.
After her dad died of a stroke aged 44, she watched her mum Julia graft hard to support them. But she lived in fear of not earning enough for the rent, so at 14 she was sent to work at a tailoring firm in Whitechapel.
Beatty was born in a time that was harder yet infinitely kinder and it instilled in her a need to support the vulnerable and weak.
During the Second World War, she was a postwoman and a munitions worker.
Later she and husband John – who in 1966 became the second Mayor of Tower Hamlets – worked hard to create community funding, help the elderly and build affordable housing.
Beatty is proudly the Labour Party’s longest-serving member.
She attributes her longevity to “hard work and family; I rule the roost”.
along the line, you have to make a choice. I had a marriage to medicine and it made me who I am.” ■ The Stepney Doorstep Society by Kate Thompson is out now, published by Michael Joseph.