In 1967, my mother, Jill Norris, who has died aged 96, set up Enfield Toy Library, in north London – the first of its kind in the UK – to provide local children with learning disabilities access to a wide range of educational toys. At the time she had three children under the age of five, two of whom had disabilities. In 1972 the growing network that she had founded was registered as a national charity, the Toy Libraries Association.
Jill was born in London, the youngest of four children of Doris (nee Siepmann) and Percival Waterfield, a senior civil servant. She was at school during the second world war at Cheltenham Ladies’ college and won an exhibition in history to Oxford, where she studied PPE – philosophy, politics and economics – at Lady Margaret Hall.
