SEVEN is supposed to be a lucky number – but it was anything but for Dorothy.

From 1934, she was to suffer seven years of the cruellest luck bestowed on any young lady.

First she had to give up studying at the prestigious Italia Conti stage school to nurse her sick mum, who eventually died of cancer. This turned 19-year-old Dorothy’s life upside down.

It was about this time she fell pregnant out of wedlock and, on June 16 1935, she gave birth to a baby boy named Horace. During this time, society frowned upon single mothers.

She was living with her sister Hilda at the time at Church Street, Canterbury, and gave birth to the child in Margate, the home town of her eldest sister Elsie.

Tragically, Horace died on April 25 1936, aged just 10 months, at The Home, Nunnery Fields, Canterbury, after suffering from measles.

Then there was break-up from the family, which tragically was never resolved.

But Dorothy found true love and married James Lawrence Goldring on June 10 1938 at a registry office in the Elham borough.

And then they had a child together when on November 30 1938 David Goldring was born at Hythe Nursing Home.

The couple were living together at 66 Princes Terrace, Hythe.

Just as things looked good – and Dorothy had settled down with her hubby, her life was thrown into turmoil again by the breakout of the Second World War.

And in May 1940 James, who was a keen seaman, sailed as an assistant cook aboard the Gracie Fields to evacuate British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in France.

Cruelly James was killed as the Luftwaffe bombed the boat – and Dorothy was a widow at the age of 24.

It is not know what happened to her son David. No records have been discovered, apart from his birth certificate.

However, Dot re-married within eight weeks to Glyn Clayton Tilbury, otherwise known as Toby.

They lived in Broadmead Road, Folkestone, on August 3 1940 in Folkestone during the height of the Battle of Britain.

Dot ended up evacuating to Northampton and worked in a munitions factory.

But in yet another cruel twist of fate, Toby was captured by the German Army while serving in Crete in 1941. He was to spend the rest of the war in a Prisoner of War Camp.