Mary Watts-Tobin

Mary Pritchard attended Roedean girl´s school and then went to Newnham College, Cambridge before becoming a medical student at London University. During her time at London, she won both the 1961 Universities and British Junior Championships and attended that year´s World Student Games at Torino (Turin).

Pritchard successfully defended her universities´ title in 1962 and also beat the senior British champion Theresa Offredy to win the Desprez Cup, which she retained in 1963, when she also won her third Universities´ title. Pritchard was also the 1963 British women´s foil champion. In July that year she married Lancaster University lecturer Dr. Richard Watts-Tobin and their honeymoon was spent in Gdansk, Poland, while she was making her international début in the World Fencing Championships.

The following year, Watts-Tobin was selected for the Tokyo Olympics. She won all six of her first round pool contests and went on to reach the semi-finals, but was eliminated by the Italian Bruna Colombetti-Peroncini. In 1968 Watts-Tobin won the inaugural North of England ladies foil title, doing so in the presence of her eight-month-old daughter Helen.