A hundred years ago this week, Ethel Belcher attended a fancy dress ball in Cardiff, just out of Stratford. The evening was to raise funds for the Belgian Relief Fund, which was set up in October, 1914, providing New Zealanders with a way to send money and assistance to the war-torn country.
The dance was held on Friday, May 21 and featured music from M and V Prebble. Ethel, who was born in 1896, was one of 11 children born to Joseph and Louise Belcher, settler farmers who arrived in the Cardiff area of Taranaki in the mid 1880s.
Ethel never married but went on to become a teacher at Cardiff School and was 19 when she attended the ball. She died in 1983, at the age 87, having spent her later years living with her sister Freda on the corner of Miranda St and Pembroke Rd. She is buried, next to Freda, at the cemetery on East Rd where her parents are also buried. Other family members are buried at the pioneer cemetery on Regan St.
A photo of Ethel, along with her dance card, was sent to the Stratford Press by Graham Jordan, formally of Stratford who now lives in Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia.
