“Mrs. Hooper,” from the Diary of Isobel Scott

Mrs Hooper

From the diary of Isobel Scott, on board Hospital Ship Lady Anderson, Tuesday, Nov. 9th, 1934.

…After dinner, I went round to visit blind Mrs. Hooper and spent a most interesting afternoon.  She is about sixty.  During the afternoon, I gathered most of her life story.  She told of learning telegraphy herself, while her sister was studying it, though only twelve years old.  And then how one day while her sister was out with a message, an imperative call came through the office, and she plucked up courage to receive it.  She went away from home, and took her first office job when only fifteen years old.

She married and had two children, a boy and a girl, and then was left a widow at thirty, and at about the same time lost her sight.  Nothing daunted, she applied for, and received a position as assistant in the telegraph office in her home town, and worked there for four years after loss of sight, when she became eligible for a pension.

She wrote away for books and instructions, and learnt Braille by correspondence, and has been receiving books from the Toronto Library for a number of years.  She also continued doing her housework, and knitting.  A piece of her knitting won first prize at the recent local fair, in competition with sighted work.