LARGE FORTUNE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20066, 12 October 1939, Page 8

LARGE FORTUNE

EX-SHOP GIRL’S CAREER

UNUSUAL SUCCESS STORY This is the story of a girl who made good—a story that should cheer thousands of shop girls throughout the country, states the Daily Dispatch. Thirty-five years ago Miss Ethel Frances Newth was a milliner's apprentice earning less than £1 a week. When she died last June she had been earning a four-figure salary as managing buyer of the gown departments of Bourne and Hollingsworth, Limited, Oxford street, London, auo had travelled all over the Continent and the United States. Her will, published recently, revealed that she left a fortune of £38,170. No Short Cuts But her story is one of hard work, perseverance, and ambition. There were no short cuts to. wealth. The daughter of a dressmaker, Ethel Newth had only an average seccudary school education, and later a secretarial course. Originally, she planned to go into the post office. If she had managed to pass the medical examination she would probably never have earned more that! £5 a week. But failing to get into the post office, she took a job as a milliner’s apprentice in Regent street. A few years later she joined Bourne and Hollingsworth's as an assistant in the costumes department. And for 35 years she remained with this firm, moving steadily up, rung by rungassistant, assistant buyer, costumes buyer, managing buyer, member of the board of managers. "Her heart and soul were in her work,” Mr. E. C. Saunders, of Brighton, her brother-in-law, told the Sunday Dispatch. She was a handsome woman,' dark and tall, but she never married. I don’t think she had time. She was very energetic and alive, always thinking up new ideas. When the war began she was already a buyer in costumes. At the end she had moved much further ahead. “She used to say that when she first joined the firm there were only 15 or 16 samples of ready-made clothes, and by. the time she retired there were about 17,000. She was earning a fourfigure salary 'by then, and the firm presented her with a diamond watch on her retirement. Actually she didn’t retire altogether from the firm, but remained on the board-of managers, and acting in an advisory capacity. Lived Simply and Quietly “Two years later, when she was only 54, she died. It seems sad that she should have enjoyed so little of her leisure and money. “But that is often what happen when -people who work hard retire' She lived very simply and quietly. She could have had a car and a chauffeur and lived in an expensive hotel in London, blit she wanted nothing like that.” Her Brighton home and furniture Miss Newth left to her sister, Alice Saunders, and legacies to the staff of the Ivanhoe Hotel, Bloomsbury, where she stayed in London. The residue of her fortune was left between her brothers and sister.