Obituary: Edith Bentley - activist and health worker

Dec 16 2008 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A DEDICATED activist and health worker has died.

Edith Bentley passed away aged 93 at Abbey Place Care Home in Fartown on December 10.

In the 1980s she founded two groups for older people in Huddersfield and was given an MBE for her work.

Mrs Bentley was born in Cheshire on March 26, 1915, and grew up in Dukinfield near Stalybridge.

She worked as a midwife in nearby Hyde during the Second World War, delivering babies as German bombs fell around her.

She married Oliver in 1942 and moved to Huddersfield to work as matron at Greenhead Nursery. The couple lived at Woodhouse Avenue in Fartown. They had two sons, Robert and Richard.

Mrs Bentley went on to work as a sister-tutor at St Luke’s and a lecturer at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. She also worked as a family planning adviser in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1983 she founded the Over-fifties Weekday Leisure Club (Owls) based at Huddersfield Sports Centre. The group offers sports and games for older people.