Gladys Pearcey

From The Guardian-
"My mother, Gladys Pearcey, who has died aged 93, had a life which reflected the tumult and changes of the 20th century. She was born in Edmonton, north London, eldest of three children of Ethel (nee Lord), a tailor, and James Bond, a printer. She and her two younger brothers, Ronald and Kenneth, were brought up by their mother and grandmother after her father's early death from wounds sustained in the first world war. From an early age Gladys took on family responsibilities against a background of relative poverty.
She stayed on through the sixth form at Latymer co-educational grammar school in Edmonton, and was first in her class almost every year, as well as becoming head girl. It was here that she first started to form her political views, seeing some of her classmates go off to fight in the Spanish civil war. But her family could not pay for her go to university, so she took the civil service exams and entered the Crown Agents, as their first direct-entrant female executive officer, in 1938. There she worked in the shipping department, buying goods from suppliers across the UK to be sent to the British colonies.
During the second world war she volunteered for civil defence in the London region, and was one of the youngest female incident officers in the ARP (Air Raid Precautions), taking charge of the emergency services at major bombing incidents. Her experiences had a profound effect on her."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/13/gladys-pearcey-obituary