By Diane Wailes
Lena Margaret Ashwell (née Pocock) had a rather unusual start in life. Her father was Commander of HMS Wellesley, an old gun ship which was anchored at North Shields and used to train ‘Tyneside waifs’ and young men for a life in the Navy. Lena was born onboard the ship in 1869 and lived on it until she was eight. But her less than glamorous childhood was never going to hold her back.
When she grew up, Lena trained as an actress – and when war broke out in 1914 she was determined to use her skills and experience to help raise the morale of the lads in the trenches. She organised companies of singers and entertainers to travel to France and Belgium, and went along herself to entertain the troops. Lena was the first person to do this on a large-scale and, in 1917, she was awarded an OBE for her invaluable, morale-boosting work.
After the war, she set herself up as a theatre manager with a group called
The Lena Ashwell Players, which put on plays across London. One of the ‘Ashwell Players’ was an 18-year-old just starting his acting career, called Laurence Olivier. Unfortunately, Lena didn’t spot his talent and fired him for getting the giggles in the middle of a performance of Julius Caesar!
Lena married twice, the second time to Sir Henry John Forbes Simson, the royal obstetrician who had the great claim to fame of delivering both the future Queen Elizabeth Il and Princess Margaret.
On her death in 1957, the Times described Lena as, ‘an actress of force and sincerity’. The Manchester Guardian remarked that during the course of the Great War, 600 artists had been engaged by her to entertain the troops, and that she had raised over £100,000 to pay for their expenses.
Not bad going for a girl born and raised on a training ship in North Shields!
