Overview
Jane Leighton (17 March 1944 – 4 July 2012) was an English healthcare campaigner and television producer. The oldest of three children, she abandoned school halfway through her studies to take up a secretarial course and her first job was as the secretary to the managing director of Anglia Television. Leighton's campaigning on healthcare issues began in 1974 at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and successfully campaigned for improvements to services lacking their own lobbying group at the Liverpool Community Health Council. Her efforts impressed Granada Television who invited her to work on the news programme World in Action.
Leighton worked at the Littlewoods retail company to devise an equal opportunities employment system which won her an award and was later employed by Mersey Television as the general manager for the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside. She returned to Granada in 1990 as head of public affairs and helped the company retain its television franchise. After leaving in 1992, Leighton embarked on a portfolio career which saw her serve as either a member or chair of various organisations. She joined Dignitas after learning of cancer in February and travelled to Switzerland where she took her own life five months later.
Biography
Early life and career
Leighton was born on 7 March 1944 at the Hill Garden Nursing Home in Hemsby, Norfolk. She was the oldest of three children to the agricultural labourer Robert Henry William Palmer and his wife Doris Maud, née Hunn. Leighton had one sister and one brother. Her parents lived at 22A High Street in Caister-on-Sea at the time of her birth and later operated a post office and stationers in the town. Leighton went to the Great Yarmouth High School for Girls but abandoned her studies partway through so she could take up a secretarial course. She then became a secretary to the managing director of Anglia Television Dick Joice. It was at Anglia Television that Leighton met the electrical engineer Bernard Leighton and the two were married in Norwich on 4 June 1966.
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