SINGING MILL GIRL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 16

SINGING MILL GIRL.

It EM AUK ABLE ROMANCE. A romantic story is wrapped up in the personality of Miss Betty Blackburn, the dramatic soprano, who is delighting Stroll Picture Theatre' audiences.

It is not many years since she was a tired little' Lancashire mill girl, rising at dawn or before, tramping to rte mill with hundreds' of others, and toiling hard. She knew something about singing, even at the age of 13, when she entered the mill. When, as a child of eight or nine, she was singing in the streets at the maypole festival and collecting badly needed pennies and perhaps a sixpence or two, a schoolmaster was struck by the quality of her voice and gave her singing lessons.

Then a wonderful opportunity came, i concert was announced in aid of icpatriated soldiers. The schoolmaster .vast asked if he knew of a singer who wild help. He 1 nominated Betty. The “Singing Mill Oirl” created a sensation.

One day she. saw it stated that Mme. Calve. the. great prima donna, who was ringing at the Queen’s Hall, would take as a protegee any girl with a oromising voice and “make a Carmen of her.”

She wrote to Mine.- Calve, who heard her sing. “To niv unbounded delight she said Qie would take me as a pupil, and I started right away. Then she had to abroad on her tour. That was in 1 920. and' she has not been hack since: but before she went she discovered that T was singing by holding mv head in pi peculiar wav. and- susw'ted something wrong with my throat. She sent me to T)r. Lloyd.. Camso’s doctor, and he °dvised an operation. “The result was wonderful. The passages of my throat were cleared, and. to mv utter astonishment. inrteod o f my voice being a contralto T found it had been turned to a soprano.”