The first part of Joan Court's autobiography.
We normally stock In The Shadow of Mahatma Gandhi by Joan Court, but we do not have a copy at present.
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Joan Court, now approaching 90 years old, is renowned in Cambridge for her indefatigable campaigning for animal rights. Yet that story has barely begun at the conclusion of In The Shadow, her autobiography -- or rather the first part of it! This book takes us up to 1977, when at the age of 57 she moved to Cambridge to read for a degree in Social Anthropology.
Joan tells her story modestly, in a simple and captivating style. But her life is -- by any measure -- extraordinary. It would be hard to imagine a more tragic childhood: her parents separated when she was 3, and she was left with her alcoholic mother who abused her both physically & emotionally. Her father took his own life when she was 13. Her mother took her out of school and into service, and finally to Cape Town, where Joan worked in the convent orphanage.
She returned to London, this time without her mother, to train as a nurse and a midwife. At the end of World War II she was finally able to realise her childhood dream of living in India. In the political turmoil of British withdrawal, she set up a midwifery service in the slums of Calcutta, pioneering simple yet effective techniques of antenatal care to save many lives. During this period she met the inspirational Mahatma Gandhi.
Joan continued to practise as a midwife in extreme conditions: in the remote mountains of Kentucky, where the only viable transport was on horseback; then back to the East where she got in trouble with the Pakistani authorities for promoting birth control.
These remarkable adventures -- and the loves and losses, joys and griefs, that accompanied them -- are recalled in an honest and straightforward manner. There are a few wry reflections from this wise and compassionate woman looking back on her life. The language is economical, and the pace just right: I found the book very hard to put down, and finished it in a few sessions.
Leavening her life with periods of academic study, Joan's work continued to break new ground. At the NSPCC in the 1960s, she led unprecedented investigations into "battered babies" (as abused children were then known), and later helped to frame the first child protection legislation. And there ends the book, although not Joan's story. I look forward to the next instalment!
TG
[ The second part of Joan Court's autobiography is entitled The Bunny Hugging Terrorist and is now available. ]