1972: Mother Thames - Lady of the London docks | Look Stranger | Weird and Wonderful | BBC Archive

"I could have gone to the devil very, very easily when I was young. I had quite the wrong impulses."

Affectionately known to dockers and lightermen as 'Muvva Thames', 'The Missus' and 'The Grand Old Lady of the Thames' - Mrs Dorothea Woodward-Fisher is as known and loved by the people of Dockland as the Thames itself. Mother, too, to hundreds of ex-servicemen during the war, she gives herself unstintingly to helping others - the young and old, the sick and the lonely.

Now in her late 70s, she does good as others do ill - for the fun of it; tackling life with a vigour which puts many half her age to shame. Look Stranger profiles this London legend.

Clip taken from Look Stranger, originally broadcast on BBC One, 1 March, 1972.

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