Constance Winifred Mark, née McDonald, attended Wolmer’s Girls’ School. The Guardian obituary of 16 June 2007 says she was “educated privately at Wolmer’s Girls’ School.” The Jamaica Information Service, two days after her death, wrote independently: she “was born in Kingston in 1923, and attended the Wolmer’s Girls School.”

The Guardian recorded her birth on 21 December 1923 in Rollington Town, Kingston, and her death in London on 3 June 2007, aged 83. At 19, in 1943, she was recruited in Jamaica into the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She served ten years as a medical secretary in the British military hospital. After promotion to lance-corporal she believed she was short-paid; she campaigned for Caribbean servicewomen to be recognised. “The Queen owes me eight years of tuppence a day,” the obituary quotes.

She received the British Empire Medal in 1991 and was appointed MBE in 1993, the Guardian says, for meritorious service and for work that included West Indian ex-service personnel and community organising in Britain. She was a founder member and president of the Mary Seacole Memorial Association. She married Stanley Goodridge, a Jamaican fast bowler, in 1952; she joined him in Britain in November 1954 with their baby daughter, Amru Elizabeth. Their son Stanley was born in 1957. JIS said she was survived by daughter Amru, son Stanley and grandson Andrew. The funeral was on 22 June 2007 at St Luke’s Church, West London.

Sources

Sources: The Guardian, Connie Mark obituary, 16 June 2007; JIS, High Commissioner to UK pays tribute, 8 June 2007; JIS, High Commission pays tribute to five Jamaican women, 13 March 2014.