RESPECTED magistrate, family planning doctor and the county's probation committee chairwoman Jill Duncan OBE has died, aged 92.

Jill, who lived in Steeple Aston for 58 years, was a magistrate on the Banbury and Bloxham bench from 1970 until the mid-90s.

She was awarded an OBE in 1994, for services to the magistracy.

An advocate for community service over prison, she chaired Oxfordshire’s Probation Committee.

In a memoir for her grandchildren she recalled: “The bench was so different then. I and a local vet were practically the only two without a title. All the women wore hats until the vet and I rebelled. The most heinous crime was poaching and ABH and GBH were practically unknown.”

Jill retired as Head of the Oxfordshire Family Planning Service in 1988.

She often told entertaining stories of an era when myths about pregnancy still prevailed, including fears that kissing or holding hands could get you pregnant and that jumping up and down after sex was a contraceptive.

Gillian Duncan, known to everyone as Jill, was born on August 8th 1924 in Hove, Sussex, to Mary and Douglas Arthur ‘Tim’ Crow.

Brought up in Brighton with her two sisters Jenny and Jane, she went to Roedean School, then St Christopher's School in Letchworth, Hertfordshire.

Her father Tim was an ear, nose and throat surgeon who inspired her to go into medicine.

She qualified as a doctor at St Andrews University, where she met her husband, Dr Ken Duncan, who died in 1999.

They fell in love whilst working gruelling night shifts together as junior house surgeons in Dundee Royal Infirmary.

Training before the arrival of the NHS made her a passionate advocate for free healthcare’s capacity to alleviate poverty.

She recalled being called to assist a birth in a Dundee tenement where a family lived in a single room in complete darkness. She had not thought to bring a torch and had to work entirely by touch.

She was married in 1950 in Woodmancote, Sussex, once Ken had completed his military service in Germany.

The couple worked in general practice in Brighton before Ken started to specialise in industrial medicine, a job which took them round the country to Bath and Warrington.

The couple had four children, Janet, Sally, Mary and Lucy between 1952 and 1960.

During this time Ken was appointed Chief Medical Officer of the UK Atomic Energy Authority in Harwell, and they settled in Steeple Aston in north Oxfordshire.

She became very involved in village life in Steeple Aston, in both the Women’s Institute and serving as a manager of Dr Radcliffe's School.

She returned to work in the 1960s in Northamptonshire giving sex education talks to schoolchildren and working in child welfare clinics.

Around the same time she was approached by both the Conservatives and Labour to be a rural district councillor - she agreed but insisted on standing as an independent.

A keen gardener, she loved playing tennis on a bumpy grass court at the bottom of the garden and was also an enthusiastic and adventurous cook.

She died peacefully at home on December 1.

She leaves four children, Janet, Sally, Mary and Lucy, 7 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

A private cremation will be followed by a thanksgiving service in the Church of SS Peter and Paul, Steeple Aston, on Wednesday 21st of December at 2.30pm.