Echoes of the Past: Women in Optics

For anyone who stares wistfully out of their practice window dreaming of a new life overseas or for those who are nearing retirement and are thinking of sliding into clothes designed primarily ‘for comfort’ and pottering around the garden, then a read of Peg Wood’s remarkable story in the March 7 1975 edition of Optician is a must.

Described by the interviewer as ‘barely 5ft tall’, Peg was born in 1904 and qualified as an optometrist in 1927 from the London School of Optics. Afterwards, she moved to the Yorkshire Refraction Hospital where she met her New Zealand husband Ralph Wood.