THERE can't be many young girls from a working-class background among the mills of East Lancashire who have trodden the same path through life as Margaret Haigh.

A brilliant student, she won a handful of scholarships to Somerville College, Oxford, picked up a First in History and became a double Blue in hockey and cricket.

She went on to an important Government research job during the Second World War and then, within a few years, she was a vagrant, living off blackberries and handouts with spells in mental institutions – and Holloway.

Eventually, after some 12 years, the former Darwen schoolgirl who had been born in Burnley, recovered enough to take up once again a position in society.

Her story is told in a new book Slightly Above the Weaver, by Duncan Scott, after 17 years of research – and even after Margaret died in 2003, aged 84, he pressed on.

Margaret Haigh was born in Carter Street, Burnley, to Clara and Sam in 1921. Three years later they moved to Romney Avenue and she began her long academic journey at Coal Clough Infant School.

When Sam lost his manager’s job, the family were rescued by the Congregational Church network. Percy Davies, a prominent Darwen Quaker, gave him the job of caretaker at the Greenfield Institute in the town, built alongside Garden Village for workers at the family’s Greenfield Mill.

Margaret went to Bolton Road Elementary School and the family lived just a few doors away from No 3 Garden Village when the Mahatma stayed there overnight on his visit to Darwen in 1931 Davies – later the first Lord Darwen – steered Margaret through her schooling and after spells at Quaker schools in other parts of the country, she went to Oxford where she had a brilliant academic and sporting career in spite of a stammer and a struggle to make friends.

She always recognised her working class roots, although she thought her family to be ‘slightly above the weavers’ who marched past their home every morning in their clogs to start work at the mill across the road.

During the war she proved to be an excellent social researcher and worked in the Manchester docks while based at Manchester University.

Stress and depression began to take their toll and within a few years she was in and out of mental institutions, far from family and friends.

In 1953 she was sent to Holloway for six months for stealing bicycles and breaking the terms of her probation.

But for the next 12 years she was a vagrant, Scott thinks ‘wanderer’ is kinder, tramping the highways and byways and living rough. It was ‘a test of endurance and willpower’ he adds. It’s a sad story of what might have been.

I also looked in vain for a decent picture of Margaret. Surely one could have been found? And another thing – what happened to her parents?

n Slightly Above the Weavers, by Duncan Scott, is available from www.lulu.com priced at £7.