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Memories 803 tells how Ethel was born in Newcastle in 1870, the daughter of William Snowball, who ran the “Harrods of the North” in Gateshead. The frontage of Snowball & Sons in the High Street stated that they were “drapers, silk mercers & furniture warehousemen”.
READ MORE: STAN LAUREL’S ABANDONED CHURCH IN BISHOP AUCKLAND AND THE DERELICT SCHOOL VISIT ONE OF MISS SNOWBALL
Snowball & Sons, drapers and warehousemen, were the Harrods of the North in Gateshead (Image: Unknown)
When she was 16, Ethel was sent to Clairmont, a private school in a purpose-built institution that now sadly stands at the top of Princes Street in Bishop Auckland. It was here that she excelled academically, topping all the students who took the Cambridge exams in the Darlington district, and her English paper was “ranked second in the whole of England”.
A postcard showing Clairmont as a high school. Image courtesy of Tom Hutchinson (Image: Tom Hutchinson)
She left the school for a year or so, but then returned as a teacher in 1888, Clairmont advertising her appointment in The Northern Echo to attract new pupils.
An advertisement for Clairmont School, Bishop Auckland promoting Miss Snowball’s teaching skills, from The Northern Echo of 18 August 1888 (Image: Chris Lloyd)
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and the school closed shortly after. Last week we reported how Tom Hutchinson found Ethel at home in Gateshead with her father in the 1891 census, visiting her former Clairmont headteacher in Fife in the 1901 census, and then in Gosforth in the 1911 census when her occupation was described as “lecturer in voice production”.
Then Ethel just seemed to disappear.
But brilliant detective work by Billy Mollon ensured that Miss Snowball didn’t just melt away.
First, he found a death certificate, dated 13 October 1956, for an “Ethel May Ormay (formerly Snowball)” who died aged 86 in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It said she was born in Newcastle in 1870 where her father was a “warehouse”, and the death was registered as “Madge Rankin”.
Could this be our wife? The description of her successful merchant father as a “camper” was a bit odd but fit the wording on the outside of the Gateshead emporium, and Madge Rankin turned out to be the daughter of Ethel’s older sister, who had married and moved to Scotland.
With the dates also aligned, it looked like this was Clairmont’s brain box, but one mystery remained: why the surname “Ormay”?
Billy continued his search, this time for “Ethel Ormay”, and he began turning up newspaper references, such as this one from the Perthshire Courier in 1911, which stated that “Miss Ormay is a lecturer in elocution and voice production at Sheffield University, and has brought her inimitable histrionic powers to a high state of perfection”.
Clairmont, Princes Street, Bishop Auckland, is now vacant (Image: Chris Lloyd)
So it seemed that Ethel studied elocution in Sheffield and also had a stage career in Scotland. But could Billy be sure that Miss Ormay was the same person as Miss Snowball?
The clinical article came from the Stonehaven and Alloa Journal, which reviewed a concert at Kincardine on 12 December 1903 before “a large and fashionable audience, whose enthusiasm and joy found loud expression more than once during the evening”.
The star of the show was Miss Ormay who did some recitations.
She opened with Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin. “One of the most difficult of elocutionary gymnastics was recited with astonishing sympathy and skill,” said the Journal. “None of the author’s verbal witticisms were lost on the audience and the strange twists and turns of the verse were made with perfect understanding.”
She then performed excerpts from Romeo and Juliet. “The famous balcony scene excited the greatest interest among the audience and provided perhaps the severest test to which Miss Ormay’s skills were subjected… her version was strikingly successful, and she brought the atmosphere of the play and the passionate intensity of that particular scene before the audience with wonderful skill.
“Miss Ormay’s gift of sympathetic interpretation held her wearer from start to finish.”
The article concluded by saying, “To our local readers, Miss Ormay is best remembered as Miss Snowball.”
Ethel must have adopted “Ormay” as a stage name, and one of the papers even printed a picture of the legendary elocutionist.
Ethel May Ormay, the famous elocutionist, as featured in the Perthshire Courier in 1911: our star scientist, Ethel May Snowball, of Clairmont (Image: Chris Lloyd)
“I’m over the moon that I found it, especially since Ethel Ormay gets so much praise in the articles about her,” says Billy.
But why did she adopt “Ormay” – what is the meaning of this name?
Clairmont, Princes Street, Bishop Auckland, is now vacant (Image: Chris Lloyd)
FOR a large part of the 20th
Evelyn Graham got in touch to say that it was definitely 1972. January 1972, to be precise, when she was due to give birth to her daughter in Clairmont, but, as her due date neared, said Clairmont was closed for deliveries and so she was sent to the general hospital in Cockton Hill Road.
The day after the birth, January 19, she was sent to Clairmont for six days of recovery, being carried up to her second floor by two tough men, because new mothers did not take steps in those days.
“We had to learn how to bathe our babies and there were staff who took pictures of us when we were the last mothers,” says Evelyn. “The matron, Mrs. Fishwick, ruled with an iron rod. I went up four steps to the office to make a phone call and she came and said to me, ‘How did you manage to get up here?’ because we weren’t allowed to go up the stairs for five days.”
For decades, Clairmont has given birth to generations of Aucklanders. Evelyn’s husband, David, was born there in 1945, although Evelyn herself was born at home in Coronation in those pre-NHS days.
“My mom had a lot of complications, but the nurse who was with her was reluctant to call a doctor because she said ‘you have to pay for it,'” says Evelyn, “so when my sister, Ann, came a little later, she decided to go to Clairmont.”
Les Featherstone lays a wreath next to the Airmen Plaque installed by Alan Ellwood, right, at Jubilee Fields Community Center (Image: Alan Ellwood)
LES FEATHERSTONE is probably the last surviving eye witness to the events of 31 May 1944, when a Stirling bomber crashed in fields near Shildon, killing all seven of its RAF crew.
Les is 93 now and lives in New Zealand, but last week visited his hometown. In his day, the bomber, caught in a thunderhead cloud, descended into West Thickley farmland, now covered by the Jubilee Fields Estate.
“He was only nine years old in May 1944, but he still remembers that day vividly,” says Alan Ellwood, who spent eight years covering the accident. “Les and three of his school friends were playing in the field behind the farm when they heard the plane’s engines in the distance, misfiring and roaring.
“Then they saw it come out of the cloud and descend quickly over the Four Lane Ends. They then knew it was about to crash, so they ran . . .”
READ MORE: Unveiling of the plaque to the seven airmen killed in Shildon
IN: THE FULL STORY OF LK517
Memories 789 earlier this summer tells the story of the crash of LK517 and how Alan raised money for a plaque dedicated to the seven airmen to be installed at the Jubilee Fields Community Centre, which is very close to the crash site.
“Les would have loved to have been present at the unveiling of the plaque in July, but he did it last week while on holiday in England, and he was very grateful to Caroline Dunn who opened the center so he could see it,” says Alan.
