Obituary: Alys Lancaster

Sep 17 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THOSE were the days. The butler’s spy-hole in the machine on the pier provided flickering thrills, kiss-me-quick-hats were high fashion, held down against the bracing breeze, which carried the smells of frying fish down the prom, “poe-shh” landladies liked refined guests, and she was the queen of Britain’s most popular resort.

To all in the know, she was the face of Blackpool. But others also noted the figure, deliciously described as “svelte yet curvaceous”, which slipped into one-piece, woollen swimsuits – often featured in newspaper photographs, at a time when the fashionable young things posed in goosepimpled splendour on the edge of the emerging lidos.

Such was her success as a mannequin, the name favoured before “model”, that at various times during the 1930s, Alys Milner was crowned the Morecambe Carnival Queen, Miss Blackpool and Beauty Queen of the North. Such successes led to her being signed up to wear clothes made by the Windsor Woollies company, in Poulton-le-Fylde.

The problem with wool swimming costumes was that they sagged and could also be more revealing than intended. Miss Milner moved seamlessly into the new rubberised costumes, parading in one at the British Trade Fair in Paris.

Born in Thornton, Miss Milner was a true Lancashire lass, but she was also a gra- cious woman of great style, who appeared in all the best newspaper and magazines in Britain and Europe, usually wearing elegant gowns, gloves and jewellery.

In 1936, she was photographed by Ralph James on a promotional poster for Blackpool and its illuminations, designed by the local Gazette and Herald newspaper. The poster won a gold medal for Britain at the fifth International Salon of Photography at Zaragoza, Spain.

The following year, Miss Milner married Gordon Dier Lancaster, a chartered surveyor. Their wedding was written up and photographed in the society columns of the papers. Their first home in Thornton had its own swimming pool, but they moved to Middlesex.

During World War II, she served in the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, while her husband joined the Admiralty.

Her husband died in 1981. But, possessed of immense charm, vivacity and wit, Alys remained a favourite in restaurants, where waiters treated her like a “queen bee”. Recently, she had suffered from many ailments, but her dignity and style was evident to the end.

Alys Lancaster, mannequin; born December 17, 1912, died August 9, 2008.