Excerpt from oral history with bio-engineer David Gow (DG), interviewed for Lothian Health Services Archive by Carmen Hesketh (CH). Transcription:

CH: “I did have a question about someone called Kerry Emsley because I had seen quite a lot of press cuttings about her in the archive. I was wondering if you could discuss a bit more about who she is or was, and why she was chosen to be fitted.”

DG: “Well, I last…I think we fitted Kerry Emsley with the REACH Hand in 1993 – I think it was March or April, something like that. I saw her again recently – I saw her in 2013, I think, was the last time I saw her. She was happily married then. When I first met her she worked in the Health Service as a receptionist and she came to the Centre for adaptations that she wore to do things, like a cuff to hold her hairbrush and things like that. She seemed to me to be exactly the right person we wanted for trying out the adult version of the REACH Hand because she would tell you “eggs is eggs”, whether it worked or not. And she would tell you…I often had to think about how they would react on television because they were obviously a focus for television or the radio, and what they said about the hand. I didn’t want to tell them what to say – I wanted it to be a true fact of them telling what they thought of the hand. So putting all those together meant that I thought she was an ideal candidate, and we made a socket and we fitted her with a hand and we fitted it with silicone gloves. And she wore it for a while, a long time – she went with the flow of publicity for it for about two years. And yeah, she was a good candidate – instead of having something to hold a hairdryer with or hold a mirror with and do the hair with that good hand, she would actually hold the hairdryer with it. She was able to do that, and that was just one thing that I think she could do with it that she told me about. Because, you know, at the end of the day that’s what you’ve got to go with – you’ve got to with the right instinct of what they find it best used for. But she was an ideal candidate for the hand because she would tell it like it is and she was good with the press. She could speak because she was good in working with the patients in one to one – she was a receptionist, so…”