On graduation Sue went to work for Osman Textiles in Bolton, but they wanted her to work whenever called upon, and as she had to rely on public transport this was not always possible. Consequently they stopped calling for her.
Meanwhile John had become involved in Housing Co-operatives, and the establishment of Neighbourhood Housing Services, a secondary housing co-operative. They were in need of Housing Liaison Officers, so Sue went to work for them, managing a number of staff and helping to establish new co-ops.
We were looking for something to do at weekends, and bought a mill-worker's "top and bottom" house in Hebden Bridge which we were doing up in our spare time. John's work moved from Manchester to Leeds, so he decided to move into the Hebden Bridge house, and Sue started looking for a job nearer to Halifax. She ended up working for North British Housing Association in Manchester, where she helped establish the co-operative at Robert Owen Gardens. After two years her contract was terminated, and she was unable to find further work in housing, mainly because of her inability to drive. She tried learning to drive several times, but just could not get the hang of it.
Sue then found a job working in a shop in Hebden Bridge selling new and reproduction dolls, and waxing pine furniture. The wax contained toluene, and was very bad for her. However while doing this job she detected an opening in the market for doll restoration, and gradually started working on doll and teddy bear repairs. Then she lost the job in the shop, and worked for a while in the kitchens at Walkley's Clog Sole factory, and in the Christmas shop on the same site. With some help from her mother, and in co-operation with a local artist John Hawkwood, she bought some premises in Hope Street, Hebden Bridge, for a dolls' hospital.
By this time John had been made redundant for a second time, and the nearest place he could find work was Chesterfield. So again he started working away, and travelling home at weekends. John bought a small house in Chesterfield, and after much discussion we decided to start a family.
After Tim was born, Sue looked at the possibility of moving her business to Chesterfield, and was just starting to build up her stock and take in work, when we found that the house we had bought in Clay Cross, and which we were due to move into, was riddled with dry rot. After much work and several new floors Tim and Sue moved in, and we had only decorated one bedroom when we discovered the house had subsidence. A long battle ensued with the Alliance & Leicester Bulding Society and their various insurers and loss adjusters, and when they did decide to do some remedial work the builders were so badly supervised that Sue ended up as an unpaid clerk of works, This took its toll on her, and during the summer of 2001 she discovered she had melanoma.
She was treated for a year with Interferon, which resulted in her losing a third of her body weight, and becoming very weak, and towards the end of the year the cancer came back. She then had a couple of years of minor surgery, before the cancer spread to inoperable areas. Sue died in May 2005.
We now have a complete doll's hospital to sell - dolls, limbs, eyes, wigs, teeth, eye-lashes, joints, pates - and yards of fine cotton lawn fabric for making dolls' clothes, as well as cots, cradles, doll stands, doll's-house furniture, dolls' clothes and the tools of the trade.
Last updated September 2005 . Composed September 2005.
This page written by John Rouse author of the Disfigurement Guidance pages.