Her figure is stout, her bust formidable, her manner blunt. Among the urbane Oxford and Cambridge tones of the House of Commons, her voice sounds rough and raucous as a Liverpool fishwife's. In the mannered cut-and-thrust of debate, her points are as emphatic as the slap of a wet cod across a face. Newspapers poke sly fun at her, other M.P.s snicker at her, county squires snort: "She's a disgrace to public life." But among her constituents in Liverpool's grimy dockland, Mrs. Bessie Braddock, M.P., is a beloved and admired champion.
For 210-lb. Bessie...
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