IT was quite an emotional moment for me when I opened the Courier, September 25, in Your say and saw the letter together with photograph of the late Doris Beer.

Doris was a great friend of mine, as well as my daughter's mother-in-law. She was such a lovely caring person and I have two dialect poetry books written by her and also the book she wrote about her in-laws which is such an inspiring book.

I know she was upset when the Salvation Army shop in London did not want to sell her book, because her mother-in-law had given her all their letters and said "you will know what to do with them Doris" – hence the book Doctor Beer, a pukka Cockney. She was always fund- raising for Emery Salvation Hospital in India. In fact, when our grand-daughter Helen was studying to be a doctor, she went out to the hospital in India to do her six weeks' training where her great-grandfather had worked.

I thank Joyce Markham for writing her letter to the Courier, because it has brought Doris back to the forefront again, which she truly deserves.

In 1966 Doris, her husband David, son Stanley and my daughter Ann went out to India to see the hospital and took some equipment with them.

They also went to Madras to see where David's father was buried. He had given his life to the Salvation Army movement and was only 58 when he died.

Margaret Whitehead