Early Life
Rayner was born to Jewish parents in London, the eldest of four children. Her father was a tailor and her mother a housewife. Her father had adopted the surname Chetwynd, under which name she was educated at the City of London School for Girls. Her autobiography How Did I Get Here from There? was published in 2003, and revealed details of a childhood marred by physical and mental cruelty at the hands of her parents. After the family emigrated to Canada, in 1945 she was placed in a psychiatric hospital by her parents, and treated for 15 months for a thyroid defect.
Read more about this topic: Claire Rayner
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)