fledged telephonist. In 1931, aged 19, Ferrier passed her Licentiate examinations at the Royal Academy of Music. In that year she started occasional singing lessons, and in December sang a small alto role in a church performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. However, her voice was not thought to be exceptional; her musical life centred on the piano and on local concerts, at King George's Hall and elsewhere. Early in 1934 she transferred to the Blackpool telephone exchange and took lodgings nearby, to be close to her new boyfriend, a bank clerk named Albert Wilson. While at Blackpool she auditioned for the new "speaking clock" service which the GPO was preparing to introduce. In her excitement, Ferrier inserted an extra aspirate into her audition, and was not chosen for the final selection in London. Her decision in 1935 to marry Wilson meant the end of her employment with the telephone exchange, since at that time the GPO did not employ married women. Of Ferrier's career to this point, the music biographer Humphrey Burton wrote: "For more than a decade, when she should have been studying music with the best teachers, learning English literature and foreign languages, acquiring stage craft and movement skills, and travelling to London regularly to see opera, Miss Ferrier was actually answering the telephone, getting married to a bank manager and winning tinpot competitions for her piano-playing." Marriage Ferrier met Albert Wilson in 1933, probably through dancing, which they both loved. When she announced that they were to marry, her family and friends had strong reservations, on the grounds that she was young and inexperienced, and that she and Wilson shared few serious interests. Nevertheless, the marriage took place on 19 November 1935. Shortly afterwards the couple moved to Silloth, a small port town in Cumberland, where Wilson had been appointed as manager of his bank's branch. The marriage was not successful; the honeymoon had revealed problems of sexual incompatibility, and the union remained unconsummated. Outward appearances were maintained for a few years, until Wilson's departure for military service in 1940 effectively ended the marriage. The couple divorced in 1947, though they remained on good terms. Wilson subsequently married a friend of Ferrier's, Wyn Hetherington; he died in 1969. Early singing career In 1937 Ferrier entered the Carlisle Festival open piano competition and, as a result of a small bet with her husband, also signed up for the