In the early afternoon of 4 March 1913, a furniture dealer’s van driver, was taking his horse and van along Tongdean Avenue in Brighton when he spotted something lying on the footpath. As he got nearer, he discovered the body of a dead man together with a dead dog, a French poodle. The man’s shirt was splattered with blood stains and a revolver was lying at his side. Both the man and dog had been shot through the heart. A note requested, “Please do bury me with my dog. He is my only friend.”
Jean Dimitresco or Giovanni Dimitrescu had been born in Romania and had had great international success as a member of the Italian Opera Company, the Carl Rosa Opera Company and Covent Garden Opera amassing considerable personal wealth.
He invested £60,000 (about £2 million today), mostly in timber, and lost this fortune during the course of one day in 1910. Tormented by this loss, he frequently threatened to commit suicide. His wife, Louise, tried to find him singing engagements but without great success. At the inquest into her husband’s death, she stated she had been ill and in a nursing home and claimed she had given Giovanni her last shilling on the day of his suicide.
Louise Lablache had also been a prominent opera singer. She was born in France to parents who were both opera singers, Nicolas Pierre André Lablache of Italian birth and Émilie Martha Marguerite Glossop de Méric who was French. Her grandfather, Luigi Lablache, was also a notable operatic figure who gave singing lessons to Queen Victoria.
In 1883, Louise sang in the opening performance of the Metropolitan Opera (MET) in New York and performed a total of 26 times during the MET’s first season. Louise continued performing in Europe and the USA and also toured Australia. Her second marriage was to Giovanni Dimitrescu in around 1890.
By 1905, she had settled in New York where she opened a teaching studio.
In 1907, she moved to London and then later settled in Brighton to continue her teaching.
Professional Singer
At the time of Giovanni’s suicide, my grandmother’s cousin, Grace Dorothy Mary Grover, was 16 years old. She had been born in Brighton, the daughter of John Samuel Grover, a tea and provision dealer, and Elizabeth Evans Turner. She had two siblings and experienced “a happy untroubled childhood”.
Grace though was a gifted singer and her path converged with that of Lousie Lablache when Grace became Madame Lablache’s pupil to train as a professional contralto singer. Her life unfolded through a number of twists and turns just as dramatic as those taken by her teacher, yet different in both direction and impact.
In later life, Grace reminisced that Lousie Lablache’s:
fiery temperament nearly killed me at times and sometimes put her on the wrong side of the law. Half French – half Italian – she used the Garcia method and was a first class teacher of voice production and operatic training.
During the First World War, Madame Lablache gave Grace permission to “give her services” for the benefit of soldiers and sailors waiting to cross the Channel or wounded in military hospitals. Her reviews confirm she was a talented and popular performer.
Towards the end of the war in 1918, she sang at a concert arranged by the YMCA at Shoreham-by- Sea, to the west of Brighton, and afterwards was asked to deliver some papers to the YMCA at Steine House in Brighton.
When she did so, she met the Secretary, Reginald Frederick Torrington, her future husband. He revealed he had attended a number of Grace’s concerts and asked her to perform for the soldiers at Steine House one Sunday.
Grace then left for a month’s tour of Scotland and the North of England. On her return, she entertained a group of young Australian, New Zealand and Canadian troops at Steine House and agreed to serve tea afterwards. From then on, she resolved to perform regularly for the YMCA.
At the end of the war, Grace toured and performed as a professional singer in London and other provincial towns in 1919 and 1920.
Grace Grover and Reginald Torrington married at the Countess of Huntingdon’s Church (a Calvinistic movement within the Methodist church) in Brighton on 30 April 1921.
In 2024, The Times reported that Grace sang as part of the British National Opera Company. The BNOC was founded in December 1921 and did indeed employ many leading British singers so that Grace could have performed for the BNOC in the early years of her marriage. She does not however mention the BNOC in her YMCA memoir.
YMCA
Her first child, Keith, was born in 1925. The pregnancy was difficult and Grace herself was ill after the birth of her son who remained in hospital for ten months. Taking stock, Grace decided that her professional singing career had come to an end.
Grace left the south coast when Reginald took a post at the YMCA in York for two years from 1927 to 1929. Then, the family relocated to Hornsey in North London when Reg became General Secretary of Hornsey YMCA which Grace remembered:
… had a lovely Lounge, Library, Gymnasium, Lecture Hall etc. and these were widely used. We lived in a house nearby …
The couple’s second son, Derek, was born in 1931. When the Second World War broke out, many activities ceased at the YMCA as residents were called up and no forces were stationed at Hornsey. Hornsey itself was subject to the incessant bombing that hit London and therefore blacked out at night with its streetlights unlit and windows covered.
Grace and Reg appear to have lived in Lancing, on the south coast east of Worthing, for a short period around 1939, a period not covered in Grace’s memoir.
Reg applied for the post of YMCA General Secretary in Manchester and the Torrington family relocated to Manchester in January 1941. The YMCA lay in the centre of Manchester and Reg set out about making it a centre for the armed forces until the end of war. Grace took on a variety of duties for the YMCA, including the recruitment of over a thousand voluntary women workers.
Army Welfare
In addition to their roles for the YMCA, Reg was appointed Army Welfare Officer for Manchester and Grace Lady Army Welfare Officer. This meant she took on extra responsibilities such as inspecting hostels for the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), an organisation that allowed women to serve in non-combat roles, and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). She also dealt with cases of compassionate leave and the welfare of unmarried mothers during pregnancy.
After the war, both Reg and Grace were recognised for their army welfare work. Grace was awarded a M.B.E. in the 1946 New Year’s Honours list and Reg an O.B.E. in 1950.
Montgomery House
In 1941, the YMCA in Manchester was heavily in debt. This debt was paid off under Reg’s leadership and then in the post-war period, Reg was instrumental in raising the money to build a new YMCA Hall of Residence in Manchester, Montgomery House. When this was built and opened, the Torringtons sold their house and moved to the Hall of Residence to work as co-wardens for six years until Reg’s retirement in 1958.
On doctor’s advice, Reg and Grace took a holiday and went on a cruise but Reg fell ill in Casablanca. His health deteriorated in the following five months and he died on 15 December 1958.
As a widow, Grace began to take on many public speaking engagements and continued with work for the YMCA. She died in 1973.
Extras
Photographs
I have found just two photographs of Grace, neither of which is of good quality. The first appeared in the Worthing Herald in 1925:
I came across the second picture online some years ago:
Children
Keith Torrington, a graduate of Cambridge University, was killed in a car crash in 1960, leaving a widow and two infant children. Derek Torrington lived to the age of 92 and was Professor at UMIST – University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology – and author of a number of academic textbooks on Human Resources Management.
Relationship to Me
Grace Dorothy Mary Grover was cousin to Grace Dorothy Turner, my grandmother. Her mother, Elizabeth Evans Turner, was the sister of Richard Edward Turner, my great grandfather.
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham for permitting access to Grace Torrington’s memoir written in 1970.