BRAVE WOMAN

Hokitika Guardian, 2 March 1933, Page 2

BRAVE WOMAN

DEATH DARED EACH NIGHT.

POVERTY IN HER OLD AGE.

A woman who was once known as Britain’s bravest woman is to-dfiy living in a tiny attic m Jkuston Hoad, London. ■She ig. Mies .Ethel Lennard, a friend 0 f Arthur Collins when the latter was in his prime at Drury Lane Theatre. Thousands of people applauded Miss Leonard every night, yet none knew who she really was'! Her job was tu double for the famous stars in scenes which required great nerve and daring. At the end of the scene she would slip quietly into the background while the star who had been watching from the wings would step forward to the front of the stage to receive the plaudits of a gratified audience. She was at Drury Lane for ten years.

Miss Lennard has crossed tottering bridges while scenery crashed about her, plunged over precipices, collapsed in where a slip meant certain injury. Finally she was forced .to give up the work through ill-health. Miss Lennard’s story since her retirement from the stage is an even greater epic of heroism in a struggle against odds. “At the end of the war I found myself penniless,” she said. “My savings were gone, and I wao left to face the world homeless and alone.

“Since then I have sometimes been starving. Time after time my only bed was the loaves in a London park.” In an effort to get a living /his remarkable woman has been in turn waitress, typist, nurse, canvasser, telephone operator and envelope addresser.. To-day at the age of 56 she finds herself unable to obtain even a job that a 15-year-old girl would spurn.