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Pond Street Nora


RichardB

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Agree totally about the length of seaches - try Old Pond Mill - or my favourite Pub search "Who can tell" ...

Discussion of Pond Street Nora seems to start here in the "Old Pond Street Bus Station" thread and ends shortly after, only to be revived here

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Sounds like I'm making them up now !

Details required please (if not already on here).

Of course Pond Street Nora is represented on the site. I wonder what her surname was, where she lived in earlier times and where she worked ... ? Is that information on here already, or does anyone know please ?

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RichardB said:
Of course Pond Street Nora is represented on the site. I wonder what her surname was, where she lived in earlier times and where she worked ... ? Is that information on here already, or does anyone know please ?

Her full name was .. Nora Kathleen Welburne

 

 

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SteveHB said:

Her full name was .. Nora Kathleen Welburne

 

Gadzooks you bounder - that's a better answer than I had (my source, evidently rubbish had Melbourne as the surname) and from a relative too.

Still, the where did she work and where did she live at age 21 will keep you and your devilish mastery of internet search-thingies occupied for now ...

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Gadzooks you bounder - that's a better answer than I had (my source, evidently rubbish had Melbourne as the surname) and from a relative too.

Still, the where did she work and where did she live at age 21 will keep you and your devilish mastery of internet search-thingies occupied for now ...

Thanks for reviving this topic, this is one of the defining memories I have of Sheffield in the 60's. Nora, striding Boadicea-like up and down the corridors of Pond Street bus station. Long raincoat, white head scarf and plimsols, two hands clutching a shopping bag which she held in front of her as she walked. Cursing all and sundry. Thats how I remember her, it's so long ago, perhaps my memory is not 100% accurate. I did see her once as we got off the bus on Burngreave Road on our way to the Tollgate Pub, she swore at me because I was with my girlfriend. Perhaps she lived up there somewhere, it was unusual to see her outside of her beloved bus terminus. I read her story on the link provided by RichardB, fascinating! They should make a movie.

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Still, the where did she work and where did she live at age 21 will keep you and your devilish mastery of internet search-thingies occupied for now ...

I'll take her brothers first name too while you are at it ...

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I'll take her brothers first name too while you are at it ...

Brother's name - Derek

She was always known to me an those that I knew as Barmy Nora

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Brother's name - Derek

She was always known to me an those that I knew as Barmy Nora

Not the answer I have (from 1942) though she may have had loads of siblings for all I know.

Can't say I ever saw her in all honesty. Maybe I'm too young and handsome ... yeah right he he

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She would also walk about town, remember everyone looking round as she approached swearing loudly at all and sundry. Everyone who knocked about in town knew Nora as well as old Cyril the tramp

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I remember Nora from the mid-60's, she was a local celebrity. She would often be around when we got off the No. 27 bus from Hurlfield School to Pond Street. I also once saw her 'sun bathing' in the Peace Gardens. There was also I time when she would be seen around Gleadless, I saw a couple of times in Brown's Store which was on the corner of Gleadless Common and Gleadless Avenue, she was very quiet, no shouting and swearing.

Wazzie Worrall

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Everyone knew her as Nora. Nora was completely harmless. However, her mental state would not allow anyone to walk past her without shouting out some profanity or other nonsense at them. No problem, we all knew Nora.

The City elders, who had given very little credence to the plight of Nora prior to the World Cup organised a section for her under the Mental Health Act in order that our visiting fans would not be offended. So Nora became a guest of Middlewood Hospital for the duration of the World Cup group stages along with other ladies detained their for years; Their only crime becoming pregnant and cast out by their families.

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Came across Nora most Saturday nights in Pond Street on my way home from the Esquire club in the early sixties, Nora died in 1981!

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On 29/03/2020 at 22:32, Sheffield History said:


Does anyone have a photograph of Pond Street Nora?

There will most likely be something in the Telegraph and Star records, I had a relative who was a photographer for them, if anything was of any interest he clicked it, and Nora was well worth a click.

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I remember Nora, she often used to stride passed the bus stop (often in the road itself) on Angel Street/Snig Hill in a morning, wearing the same long coat and white head scarf tied in a turban, swearing and cursing waving her arms about to the amusement of youngsters on their way to High Storrs. It was a bit unerving at first. One morning she must have slipped on some ice, she came passed shouting, "I sat on me a**e in t middle o rooad," over and over again. What a character. 😁

In the 60's there was also a lady who used to walk down the Moor wearing 3 or 4 hats on top of one another. 

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I well remember the poor woman striding around the City ( Centre) c. 1950s-80s as others have accurately recorded  here ….curiously, quite statuesque…potentially, even elegant …HAD she presented as a normal woman passer-by ….sadly, she didn’t and  clearly, wasn’t…..presumably suffering from some sort of long- standing psychosis. People would shout back at her sometimes …some presumably ignorant of her disposition and affronted by, yes, what could be  highly offensive and even frightening verbal attacks…but others as she represented an easy target and they knew so …unfortunately finding it necessary to reciprocate in the hope of offending someone clearly, seriously mentally sick…it was no credit to them, in jest or not.
I never ‘Norah’ actually offer physical violence to anyone, though she was a relatively tall woman….and I’ve no doubt, could be intimidating to the nervous even without that.
I heard from several female sources that she frequented public lavatories and was seen to ( attempt to?) drink “scalding” ….we’ll, let’s say, very hot water from the taps. 

One of several characters ( if I may use the term in her case) who frequented Sheffield Centre in those days…..others, happily,  in better control of their mental states….just eccentric, flamboyant personalities ….the fella with the Trilby hat, silk scarf and floral button -hole  standing in Haymarket at its junction with Dixon Lane a little theatrically, often looking as though he’d ‘had a few’ , selling bunches of flowers…I think his first name was ‘Arthur’. 
As a long-time resident of SW Sheffield, visits into Derbyshire were about as regular as those into The City…..and those memories include sightings of a strange character often seen scurrying about near a very small cottage I believe he called ‘home’ at the end of the very small lane you may, with care to other traffic, catch a glimpse of on the right as the Owler Bar Road  turns to the left to meet the large Baslow roundabout ( OR on the left of that right hand bend leaving Baslow). It was significantly smartened up the last time I was in the area and  I looked.  
I recall the person appearing to be a ( very) black, man …his visible areas of skin showing no white areas whatsoever….yet he seemed to have Caucasian features and sported a very full, if not obviously lengthy, ‘mane-like’ beard/ hair.  
Before leaving that ‘ border’ side of The City decade or so ago,  I have a distinct recollection of seeing the man’s obituary somewhere…possibly suggesting that he HAD been a man of substance …maybe even a lawyer ….who’d become a recluse. Can’t be sure on that though others may recall,  but he was one of the  memorable characters  seen in ( wider) area of Sheffields boundaries. I’ll be very surprised if someone on SH doesn’t echo the memories of that strange fella…
and others on here will, I’m sure recall others I’ve since forgotten…and not always bad memories…  

 

 

 

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On 12/03/2018 at 16:52, Jake's Grandad said:

She would also walk about town, remember everyone looking round as she approached swearing loudly at all and sundry. Everyone who knocked about in town knew Nora as well as old Cyril the tramp

One person I remember,, from around the same time as Nora I think, used to stand in the hole in the road singing in a loud operatic voice. I remember seeing him once drying his socks on the hand dryer in the gents toilets. Not sure if that was Cyril or not, but I remember being told he was an ex pupil of Firth Park Grammar School. Has anyone any information about him?

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Like many Sheffielders "of a certain age" I well remember Norah. She could appear frightening at times but was harmless, bless her. I just did a little online research.

She was born Norah Kathleen Welbourn in Sheffield on 6 November 1915, the fifth of six children born to George Thomas Welbourn, a steelworker, and his wife Margaret Ellen, née Hartley. Norah married Tom Lee in 1942, and their daughter Kathleen was born in 1945.

Norah eventually became a patient at Middlewood Hospital, where she died aged 70 in 1986, evidently of cancer.

Here is are scans of the Welbourn family's page in the 1921 census return, and the relevant details from the 1939 Register. They lived on 12 O'clock Street, in the angle of Attercliffe Road and Savile Street. Note that in the 1939 Register Norah's forenames are transposed as "Kathleen Nora", and Welbourne is spelt with an 'e' at the end, unlike all other public records. . Such errors are not unusual in the 1939 Register.  Norah-Welbourn-1921-census.jpg

Norah-Welbourn-1939-Register-copy.jpg

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