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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics

My mother’s double first at medical school

Female doctor putting on protective clothing
‘The consultant physician there was sympathetic to working mothers, but still said: “If the baby gets measles, you can’t have any time off.’” Photograph: Alamy

One baby when studying medicine 50 years ago (Letters, 9 February)? That’s nothing. In 1947 St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School took in female students for the first time. My mother, Ann Dally, was one of the three women admitted. By the time she qualified in 1953, she had two children. She found work in a non-teaching hospital, where the hours were less demanding than in a teaching hospital. The consultant physician there was sympathetic to working mothers, but still said: “If the baby gets measles, you can’t have any time off.”
Emma Dally
London

• Re music in restaurants (Letters, 6 February), a possible strategy is one I tried in a Sheffield hotel at breakfast time – the loud dance music was so unbearable that I told the waiter that if he didn’t turn it down or off, I’d show him my dance moves. He went off, almost at a sprint, and turned it off.
Mary Gameson (aged 66¾)
Norwich

• The motto of Winchester College is “Manners makyth man”. It seems his expensive education was wasted on our prime minister (Sunak refuses to apologise to Brianna Ghey’s father over PMQs trans jibe, 8 February).
Christopher Punt
Barnstaple, Devon

• When I took up hockey with Lincoln Imps in 1984, the bully-off had long been consigned to history (Quick crossword, 8 February). Hockey is a great social sport. Your compiler does it no favours.
Pol Llwynfedwen
Aberhonddu, Powys

• With reference to the statue on the far left in the letters page photo in your print edition (10 February), the caption should be: “Is that an icicle in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?”
Gordon Williams
Malmesbury, Wiltshire

• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.

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