English contralto singer, born at Southwick, Sussex, on the 1st of February 1872. She received her musical training at the Royal College of Music, and made her début in a students’ performance of Gluck’s Orfeo at the Lyceum theatre, London, in 1892. She possessed a contralto voice of exceptional power and wide range, and from the first became a public favourite as a ballad and oratorio singer. In 1900 she married the singer Kennerley Rumford (1870–1957), and with him sang constantly at concerts in all parts of Great Britain, also undertaking various long tours in the colonies. During the World War she devoted the proceeds of many of her concerts to war charities, and was in 1917 created D.B.E.
