Preston great-grandmother who arrived in UK a penniless refugee gives £5k gift to renal unit at Royal Preston Hospital

The gift, donated 54 years after Jamnaben Tailor made Preston her adopted home, is a way of saying thank you for the care her late husband received at the hospital’s renal unit.

Jamnaben also sees it as a way of giving back to the local community for the kindness shown to the couple when they had nothing.

The 89-year-old and husband Dullabhbai arrived in Lancashire in1968 after fleeing Nairobi as part of the Asian exodus of Kenya following the country’s independence from Britain. New laws had been introduced preventing many Asian residents, the majority of whom were from India, from working there.

The couple had no money and had brought with them only a suitcase of clean clothes. But, thanks to the help of friends they made within Preston’s Indian community, Dullabhbai found a job working as a tailor at D.T. Jones in Fishergate.

The couple embraced their new life in Preston and bought a home for £300, moving in 1971 to live in Trower Street, where they raised three sons and a daughter.

Dullabhbai was a diabetic and in later life the disease affected his kidneys. He needed dialysis three times a week at the Royal Preston Hospital’s renal unit.

The couple’s eldest son Ishwer Tailor MBE JP DL, who is President of Preston’s Gujarat Hindu Society, said: “The service he received at the renal unit was excellent. The care he received there was also excellent. Since my mother became a widow in 1995, she has always wanted to make a donation to the unit in memory of my father.”

He continued: “My mother finds herself in a lucky position to have an extended family and so with its help and the support of friends, she is still able to live independently. She has seen all her children find apprenticeships and get married. She has six grandsons and three granddaughters and seven great-grandchildren. Yet when she arrived here, she and my father were penniless.”

Ishwer received his MBE from the Queen for his work to promote local racial harmony and has also been awarded an honorary fellowship from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN).

The donation is for the renal unit and renal consultant Mr Laurie Solomon will now decide what it will be spent on. He said: “The Tailor family story is both fascinating and inspiring. It’s one that really resonates today with war in Ukraine and other parts of the world displacing people, who then have to rebuild their lives in countries thousands of miles from where they were born. I take my hat off to Dullabhbai and Jamnaben for embracing life in Preston and for this incredibly generous donation.”

He added: “I am currently canvassing the opinion of the renal unit staff team and current patients to decide how best to spend the funds. We will be in touch with the Tailor family to hopefully welcome them to come and see what we achieve with their gift.”