The Manchester woman believed to be Britain’s oldest Jew has died three weeks after her 106th birthday.
Dolly Phillips devoted most of her life to helping others, running the Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen and introducing a kosher meals-on-wheels service. She was awarded a British Empire Medal for her welfare efforts.
Community leaders were among 60 people at her funeral at Urmston Cemetery. As the funeral procession left the Heathlands Care Village, where she had spent her final years, religious director Rabbi Arnold Saunders observed that “when Dolly gets to heaven, the first thing she will ask is if there is anything she can help with”.
Her nephew, former Tory MP Cecil Franks, recalled her as “a legend in her lifetime, known and loved throughout the local Jewish community”.
Heathlands is also mourning 102-year-old Joseph Stone, who died just a few hours after Dolly
