Raymond Hardman obituary

My father-in-law, Raymond Hardman, who has died aged 96, was a modest man from a working-class family who overcame his relative poverty to rise to academic excellence in his chosen field of electrical engineering.

Raymond was born in Oldham to Joseph Hardman, a carder in a cotton mill, and his wife, Jessie (nee Oliver), a cotton mill worker. As a result of injuries sustained during the first world war Joseph died when Raymond was only two, and he and his younger sister, Mabel, were brought up by their mother and her sister, their Auntie Bina.