WHAT became of Ethel May Snowball, the brainbox of Clairmont, whose examination results in 1886 were the second best in the country?
Memories 803 told 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 said they were “drapers, silk mercers & furnishing warehousemen”.
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 stands sadly derelict at the top of Princes Street in Bishop Auckland. It was here she excelled academically, coming top out of all the pupils who took the Cambridge Examinations in the Darlington district, and her English paper was “classed second in all England”.
A postcard showing Clairmont as the high school. Picture courtesy of Tom Hutchinson (Image: Tom Hutchinson)
She left the school for a year or so but then returned in 1888 as a teacher, Clairmont advertising her appointment in The Northern Echo to attract new pupils.
An advert for the Clairmont school, Bishop Auckland, promoting Miss Snowball's teaching abilities, from The Northern Echo of August 18, 1888 (Image: Chris Lloyd)
Unfortunately, it didn’t work and the school closed soon after. Last week, we reported how Tom Hutchinson had found Ethel back 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 a “lecturer in voice production”.
Then Ethel just seemed to disappear.
But brilliant detective work by Billy Mollon has ensured that Miss Snowball hasn’t just melted away.
First he found a death certificate, dated October 13, 1956, for a “Ethel May Ormay (formerly Snowball)”, who died aged 86 in St Andrews, in Fife, Scotland. It said she was born in 1870 in Newcastle where her father was a “warehouseman”, and the death was registered by “Madge Rankin”.
Could this be our lady? The description of her successful shopkeeper father as a “warehouseman” was a little odd but fitted 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 aligning, it looked as if this was the brainbox of Clairmont, but one mystery remained: why the surname “Ormay”?
Billy continued his searches, this time going after “Ethel Ormay”, and he began to turn up newspaper references, such as this one from the Perthshire Courier in 1911, that said that “Miss Ormay is a lecturer in elocution and voice production at Sheffield University, and has brought to a high state of perfection her inimitable histrionic powers”.
Clairmont, Princes Street, Bishop Auckland, is now derelict (Image: Chris Lloyd)
So it seemed that Ethel taught elocution in Sheffield and also had a stage career in Scotland. But could Billy be certain that Miss Ormay was the same person as Miss Snowball?
The clinching article came from the Stonehaven and Alloa Journal which, on December 12, 1903, reviewed a concert held in Kincardine before “a large and fashionable audience, whose enthusiasm and delight found vociferous expression more than once during the evening”.
The star of the show was Miss Ormay who did several 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. “Not one of the author’s verbal witticisms was lost on the audience and the odd twists and turns of the verse were rendered with a perfect comprehension.”
Then she performed excerpts from Romeo and Juliet. “The famous balcony scene excited most interest among the audience and furnished perhaps the severest test to which Miss Ormay’s abilities 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 marvellous skill.
“Miss Ormay’s gift of sympathetic interpretation held her bearers spellbound from start to finish.”
The article finished by saying: “To our local readers, Miss Ormay will be best remembered by the name of Miss Snowball.”
Ethel must have adopted “Ormay” as her stage name, and one of the papers even printed a picture of the legendary elocutionist.
Ethel May Ormay, the famous elocutionist, as pictured in the Perthshire Courier in 1911: our star scholar, Ethel May Snowball, from Clairmont (Image: Chris Lloyd)
“I am over the moon that I have found it, especially as Ethel Ormay gets so much praise in the articles about her,” says Billy.
But why did she adopt “Ormay” – what significance did that name have?
Clairmont, Princes Street, Bishop Auckland, is now derelict (Image: Chris Lloyd)
FOR much of the 20th Century, Clairmont was Bishop Auckland’s maternity hospital until, we said last week, 1982.
Evelyn Graham got in touch to say that it was definitely 1972. January 1972, to be precise, as she had been due to give birth to her daughter in Clairmont but, as her due date approached, was told Clairmont had closed for deliveries and so she was sent to the general hospital in Cockton Hill Road.
The day after giving birth, on January 19, she was sent for six days recuperation at Clairmont, being carried by two burly men up to her second floor room as new mums in those days were not allowed to do steps.
“We had to learn how to bath our babies and there were staff taking photos of us as we were the last mums,” says Evelyn. “The matron, Miss Fishwick, ruled with a rod of iron. I climbed four steps to the office to make a phone call and she came and said to me ‘how have you managed to get up here?’ as we weren’t allowed to go up steps for five days.”
For decades, Clairmont brought generations of Aucklanders into the world. Evelyn’s husband, David, was born there in 1945, although Evelyn herself was born at home in Coronation in those pre-NHS days.
“My mum had lots of complications but the nurse who was with her was reluctant to call a doctor because she said ‘you will have to pay for that’,” says Evelyn, “so when my sister, Ann, came along a little later, she decided to go into Clairmont.”
Les Featherstone lays a wreath next to the airmen's plaque that Alan Ellwood, right, has installed in the Jubilee Fields Community Centre (Image: Alan Ellwood)
LES FEATHERSTONE is probably the last surviving eye-witness of the events of May 31, 1944, when a Stirling bomber crashed in fields beside Shildon, killing all seven of its RAF crew.
Les is 93 now and lives in New Zealand, but last week visited his home town. In his day, the bomber, which had got caught in a thunderhead cloud, came down into West Thickley farmland which is 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 has spent eight years researching the accident. “Les and three of his school friends were playing in the field behind the farmhouse when they heard the plane’s engines in the distance, misfiring and roaring.
“Then they saw it come out of the cloud and descend rapidly over the Four Lane Ends. They knew then that it was about to crash, so they ran...”
Memories 789 earlier this summer told the story of LK517’s crash and how Alan had raised funds for a plaque dedicated to the seven airmen to be installed in the Jubilee Fields Community Centre which is very close to the crash site.
“Les would have very much liked to have been present at the unveiling of the plaque in July, but he made it last week while touring England on holiday, and he was very grateful to Caroline Dunn who opened the centre so he could see it,” says Alan.